What is Guided Selling? Before we dive in, let’s start by introducing the subject. Are you having a hard time converting your website visitors into buyers? If so, reading this article will show you how Guided Selling is the tool you have been looking for to boost your conversation rate! In it, you’ll find out what Guided Selling is. Guided Selling is a relatively new type of Interactive Content that can help you increase the user experience of your website and boost your sales.
Sounds too good to be true, right? Take a look at this article to find out:
- What is Guided Selling?
- Why is Guided Selling important?
- The main benefits of using Guided Selling?
- The 3 main rules of a successful Guided Selling Interactive Experience?
WHAT IS A GUIDED SELLING EXPERIENCE?
Guided Selling is one of many types of Interactive Content in which website visitors answer a series of questions about their needs, preferences, and personal characteristics to be automatically guided towards the rights products, features, or sections of your website.
In other words, it’s like having an employee that welcomes visitors entering your physical shop. The employee will ask visitors what they are looking for and they will help them find it. A Guided Selling Interactive Experience is based on the same principle. But, instead of having a staff member, you’ll design a Guided Selling tool that will automatically suggest products to your website visitors after they answer a couple of questions.
So, what is Guided Selling? An example is worth a 1000 words.
WHY IS GUIDED SELLING IMPORTANT?
In the previous section, we explained “What is Guided Selling?”, but why is it important? There are tons of reasons why it’s essential to design a pleasant Guided Selling Interactive Experience for your website. And most of these reasons are linked with why people don’t buy from your website , to begin with.
So, let’s ask ourselves, why do users, who end up on your website, don’t buy from it? It’s generally because of the user experience of your website.
By having a Guided Selling Interactive Experience, you can fix most of these issues. A well-placed and well-designed Guided Selling tool will make your website look professional and trustworthy. Plus, they are responsive.
Also, if you have a website with tons of products with low buying involvement (like fashion items, consumer goods, and so on.), it will be excellent to help your users browse around and save some time. On the other hand, if you are selling rather complex products, like products with lots of features or options such as computers, phones, or even a SaaS plan, a Guided Selling tool can help you decomplexify it.
Guided Selling tools can also help customers understand your pricing strategy. You can allow them to change different settings to understand why some products or features are more expensive than others, making your pricing strategy more transparent. Check the simple example below to understand what I mean.
Plus, if you ask the right questions, you’ll really uncover your customer’s needs and preferences. You’ll then be able to show them products accordingly. So, they’ll be confident in the products they add to their basket because they’ll fit more closely to what they were looking for.
In other words, Guided Selling tools can help you simplify steps 2 to 5 of the online buying process and really enhance your customers’ user experience. Hence, boost your sales. Plus, there are many different industries where a Guided Selling experience could do wonders.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN BENEFITS OF GUIDED SELLING TOOLS?
Now that you know “What is Guided Selling?” and “Why it is important?”, let’s discuss what are the main benefits of Guided Selling.
1. UNCOVER YOUR CUSTOMER’S NEEDS
We can’t emphasize that enough. Guided Selling is the best way to uncover your customer’s needs online. Why? Because you simply ask them lots of questions about their needs and preferences. Plus, if you design your Guided Selling tool the right way, you’ll even be able to discover latent needs, a.k.a needs your customer didn’t realize he had.
2. IMPROVE SATISFACTION RATE
Because you’ll propose products or services that fit your audience’s needs, you’ll have a way higher chance of satisfying them. The problem with online purchases is that sometimes your audience isn’t exactly sure of what they are getting into. They cannot see, touch, or try the product, so there are lots of uncertainties. But, if they are well guided, like with the help of Guided Selling tools, they’ll have better chances to avoid buying things that don’t quite fit what they were looking for. They’ll avoid making mistakes, and therefore, be disappointed and unsatisfied.
3. CAPTURE ATTENTION
Capturing the attention of website visitors is getting harder and harder. But, with a Guided Selling Interactive Experience, you engage your users. They interact directly with your website. Users are inclined to stay longer on a website where they can participate actively rather than passively watching, reading, and browsing. They’ll enjoy replying to your questions, and they’ll be curious to see what you propose to them.
4. DISTINGUISH YOURSELF FROM COMPETITORS
Most websites are designed in the same way: A home page, category or landing pages, a search field, and product pages. It’s quite boring, really. Having a Guided Selling tool will simplify this, but it will also allow you to distinguish yourself from your competitors. Because Guided Selling is not widely used yet, you should see that as an opportunity.
5. REDUCE COMPLEXITY
A Guided Selling Interactive Experience can also help you decomplexify your product offering. For example, if you are selling cellphones, not everyone knows what a triple-camera system is. Instead of just mentioning a complex feature like that, you can ask customers questions about their usage and needs.
For example:
How important is the quality of the camera on your mobile phone for you?
1. Not so important, I rarely take pictures.
2. It’s quite important, but I wouldn’t say the most important.
3. It’s the most important for sure!
Depending on their answer, you’ll present them with different models.
6. GET INCREDIBLE AUDIENCE INSIGHTS
Of course, you’ll want to make sure you collect each participant’s answers for analytic purposes. It’s such valuable information. You can use these insights to find trends in the needs and preferences of the users. You can also find ways to target your audience better. Finally, you can give these insights to your sales team so that they are better equipped in the future.
THE 3 RULES OF SUCCESSFUL GUIDED SELLING INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE
After discussing “What is Guided Selling?”, Why is it important?”, “What are the main benefits”, let’s finish by introducing the most important rules when designing such Interactive Experiences.
1. KEEP IN MIND YOUR GOAL: ENHANCE THE USER EXPERIENCE!
Well-thought Guided Selling tools will ultimately boost your sales. But, if you design it specifically for that, rather than to enhance the user experience, you risk hurting the success of this Interactive Experience.
Think about it, if you visit a physical shop and tell the employee at the entrance you are looking for running shoes. You would be annoyed if she didn’t show you the running shoe section but instead tried to sell you the most expensive products in the shop or the products in discounts that have nothing to do with running shoes.
It’s the exact same with a Guided Selling tool. You have to make sure you are showing products that reflect the answers the customer provided you with. Don’t let them think they lost their time answering your questions; it will completely ruin their user experience.
2. KEEP IT AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE
The second rule to create a Guided Selling experience is to keep it as simple as possible. This means that you can’t create an experience that takes 15 minutes to complete. Make sure you only ask essential questions and keep it short!
3. CHOOSE WHERE TO INSERT YOUR EXPERIENCE CAREFULLY
Finally, be careful where you want to insert your experience.
- If you want to have one general Interactive Experience that helps your users browse; you can add your Guided Selling tool directly to your front page.
- If you want to help your customers decide between different products of the same category, add it to the landing page (a.k.a the category page).
- If you want to help users decide between different features of a specific product, add it to the product page.
Would you like to see other great Guided Selling examples? Then, check this one out!
GET STARTED WITH OUR GUIDED SELLING SOLUTION!
Now that you know what is Guided Selling, I hope you understand the power of using a Guided Selling Interactive Experience on your website. Also, lots of people think Guided Selling is only good for B2C companies, but it’s not true! Guided Selling can be an amazing way to boost your B2B interactive marketing strategy.
In any case, designing a Guided Selling experience is not as hard as you might think. On Dot.vu, the leading Interactive Content platform, we already have ready-to-customize templates. You’ll simply have to decide which questions you want to ask your audience and change the design of the template to fit your brand guidelines.
Create a free account to get started!