With more and more transactions moving online, we should be able to sell any product digitally.
But what about complex products and services? How do we make it easy for customers to buy complex products or services that require making several choices and adjusting multiple parameters to choose between thousands of combinations?
And I am not talking about selecting a color and size that sellers can quickly solve with variants.
Merchants implement support for Configurable Products to enhance the user experience when buying complex products. A configurable product is a product that customers can change, configure, and personalize before it is purchased. If you can master the implementation of eCommerce for configurable products, there is no limit on what you can sell online.
In some cases, merchants also sell a complex combination of products and must guide customers through several steps to ensure they buy the correct combination. The selection process is usually broken into several steps, and the customer’s choice in previous steps sometimes influences the options available in the next one.
Merchants often need to implement validation rules required to ensure the correct configuration. The final price could also change based on the choices made during the configuration.
Selecting a complex product may represent a frustrating and time-consuming task.
Customers often feel overwhelmed and need to invest considerable effort to become nearly experts in the field without the guarantee of finding the desired product in stock.
At the same time, merchants and producers of such products lack an effective, customer-friendly way of presenting their offerings, potentially making customers feel lost or frustrated and abandoning their search.
Instead of forcing customers to become experts on filters and parameters, with the help of artificial intelligence, we can simply ask about their needs and turn product selection into an engaging conversation.
An example is the Czech start-up Outfindo, which provides a customer-product matching experience through a guided selling approach powered by AI.
Initially focusing on bikes and e-bikes, the startup has now expanded its services to washing machines in collaboration with major eCommerce platforms.
By engaging customers in a conversation and asking simple questions, Outfindo’s AI-driven discovery and sales tool assists in selecting products that meet their needs and narrowing down the options. According to Outfindo, its solution reaches a 40% interaction rate with the guide among visitors, boosts website conversions by up to 3 times, and reduces returns by up to 70%.
