Online product discovery refers to how shoppers find and explore the products of a brand or a retailer online. There is no single way to initiate this, as it can begin with the use of a search engine or a personalized suggestion from a recommendation engine.
Effective online product discovery necessitates having an understanding of customers, their intent, their desires, and their needs. It also means identifying various customer personas and whether they have high, medium, or low intent to purchase. Product discovery done right can connect customers to the right product at the right time, enhance the overall shopping experience, and increase conversion rates.
Why It Matters
There are many benefits to online product discovery. Among these are the following:
- It makes online shopping enjoyable. Many things are hard to translate from an offline experience on a brick-and-mortar store to an online shopping journey. But with the right tools, brands and retailers can replicate the joy of exploring stores and finding products that pique the interest of customers. Beginning with the homepage and themed collections, and then relevant carousels on product detail pages, all the way to checkout, you can tailor the shopping journey with relevant product discovery that speaks to individual users.
- It increases customer satisfaction. When you have an effective online product discovery tool in place, you can surface the right products faster for your shoppers. This means that they will not have to sift through thousands of SKUs that do not fit their aesthetic and preferences. When customers know they can count on you to deliver based on their unique tastes, they are likely to form a meaningful connection with your brand, encouraging them to repeat purchase and recommend your site to others when they get the chance.
- It makes shoppers feel special. The secret sauce of product discovery experiences that are worth coming back for is personalization. When customers are put front and center, the product discovery paths that you create for them demonstrate your deep understanding of what they like and need. From the search results to complementary product suggestions, this approach can boost not only revenue but also long-term loyalty.
Online Product Discovery Best Practices
- Entice your customers with an engaging homepage. While customers can come from different places, they are also likely to see your homepage first. Show trending and popular items, inspirational galleries, and educational content based on their real-time context and browsing behavior.
- Make navigation and filtering intuitive. Finding the right items on your website should not be difficult. You can accurately tag items under different categories and subcategories to make filters and facets effective. For highly visual markets, brands can also make use of images instead of words to represent product categories.
- Use product recommendations. You can encourage visitors to explore more items from your inventory using carousels that present suggestions based on previous and current interactions with items on your website. “Complete the look,” “View similar items,” and “Others also bought” are some of the applications of recommendation carousels that boost seamless product discovery.
Check out this post for a complete list of product discovery best practices.