When you create an eCommerce website, the product discovery platform is one of the most critical elements. Shoppers need your site to suit different purposes at different times. If it doesn’t do that, they’ll go somewhere else to get the information they need. This article will cover how to ensure that you have a product discovery platform that converts browsers into customers.
What is a Product Discovery Platform?
Product discovery refers to the ways shoppers find your products. A product discovery platform is the sum of the parts you combine to make the product discovery process easy and fun for your shoppers.
It’s really just a fancy way of referring to your website and the features you include to make it easy for shoppers to find products that meet their needs.
Why is a Product Discovery Platform Important?
Web search is the number one-way shoppers discover products, but that’s changing. In 2020, a survey found that 23.6 percent of respondents used Amazon to search for products. And over half of Gen Z shoppers prefer to use social media for product discovery.
Once shoppers get to your website, they rely on search and recommendations to find products that interest them. Shoppers have different needs, and your site needs to address these needs to maintain a positive customer experience.
Some shoppers will be browsing for entertainment purposes, some will be researching, and some will be ready to make a purchase. The right product discovery platform can help with each activity to create a positive experience for shoppers.
That’s important because most shoppers won’t purchase on their first visit. In fact, one study found that shoppers search an average of 36 times over three days before making a purchase!
A good product discovery platform will ensure that most of those searches (especially the critical final search before a purchase) happen on your site.
How to Choose the Right Platform
When choosing a product discovery platform, there are many options. Not all of them are must-haves. The following features are critical.
Search
Search is critical. Shoppers must be able to easily search for what they want and, just as importantly, filter out results they’re not interested in. The more detailed filters you have available, the better the online shopping experience will be for your customers.
(Visual search, where shoppers submit a picture instead of a text-based search query, is another option. But text-based search is still the norm, so consider visual search a nice to have.)
Recommendations
If there are too many options, shoppers tend to get overwhelmed. Product recommendations can overcome that obstacle by surfacing appealing options for the shopper before they search.
Based on the latest research, eCommerce personalization is a must-have. So these recommendations should be personalized and highly relevant to each shopper. (Check out our article on marketing personalization statistics for more information on that.)
Retargeting
With retargeting, you can reduce your cart abandonment rate by reminding shoppers of items they’ve left behind. You can also bring back shoppers who never added anything to their carts by making good recommendations.
By combining retargeting with website visitor identification software, you can implement email retargeting campaigns that will email product recommendations to shoppers without requiring their email addresses.
Increase Sales with the Right Product Discovery Platform
Once you find the right product discovery platform, it can be a pain to implement it. But when you’re done, your customers will be able to more easily find products that appeal to them. That should lead to increased customer satisfaction, a higher average order value, and a higher customer lifetime value. So, the move should pay off in the long run.