⏫ Increase your e-commerce conversion rate with a guided selling app on the product detail page (PDP)

To help customers buy a product, more and more e-commerce sites are employing guided selling apps. The idea: through guided selling, customers receive advice just like in-store, except now it's online and automated. The result: a well-informed customer who isn't afraid to choose, which increases e-commerce conversion rates.

A logical place for such a guided selling app is the category page, or product lister page (PLP). The customer is looking for a ski helmet, navigates to the ski helmet category, sees that there are over 300 options, panics slightly, and then suddenly notices a 'Find my helmet' button. Hooray!

An equally logical - but less common - place for a product finder is the product page, or product detail page (PDP). After all: Not all customers arrive at a PDP from a PLP. Many people land on a PDP directly from Google (via ads). These types of customers may land on a specific product, but they will certainly not always know for sure that it is in fact the right product for them.

The role of the PDP in your webshop

For you as an online store, the PDP has only one purpose: to get customers to buy, buy, buy. Everything on the page serves that purpose, from the most beautiful product images to the exact right color of the buy button. Everything before the PDP is meant make customers click through to a product as quickly as possible. And everything after the PDP is all about a hassle-free transaction.

In other words, everything on and around the product detail page is focused on buying the product. Increasing conversion rates is what it's all about. And yet, on average, only 2-5% of PDP visitors buy a product.

That's because the role of the PDP is very different for the customer than it is for you as a web shop.

In fact, only a small portion of your customers come to the PDP to immediately buy something. And those people know how to do that. The majority of visitors come to the PDP to learn, compare and understand the best product for them.

And this happens to be the kind of content we all anxiously tuck away under the fold. After all, nothing should stand in the way of clicking the buy button - and increasing conversion rates.

Your PDP is set up like the line to the cash register, while many of your customers are just walking into your store.

Increase conversion rates on your PDP

Want to increase your webshop conversion rate? Then you need to do the opposite of what we have been taught in 25 years of e-commerce. Put the customer, not the product transaction, at the center of your product detail page.

If 98% of the visitors on your PDP don't buy, it makes no sense to only focus on increasing 2% to 2.1% conversion rate through clever UX tricks or dark patterns. It's much smarter to figure out how you can help those 98% get rid of their doubt. What kind of customers are these? What are they actually looking for?

"Hello, can I help you find anything?" - said the friendly store assistant.

A good guided selling app fills exactly this role. Instead of putting single focus on the checkout, you open a new route for customers who are still unsure. You offer them a helping hand, ask some good questions and then give them advice. Maybe their best buy is indeed the product they were already looking at, but maybe it's an entirely different product.

And no: offering a product finder really doesn't distract those 2% "quick buyers. It does help the other 98% in their search. This is evident from Toppy's figures. Since they started offering their product finder on the PDP, the conversion to a purchase has increased significantly. The product pages now convert a whopping 7.3% (desktop) and 3.2% (mobile) better!

So open that help route as soon as possible instead of just pushing your customers toward a (maybe even wrong) purchase. It's going to greatly increase your webshop conversion and sales.

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Is it complicated to integrate a button to product finder on your PDP? Then consider offering the button to the product finder in a pop-up. Squeezely and OptinMonster, among others, offer a pop-up builder.

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👉 Want to see an example? Check out the hiking boots PDP in our Demo Shop, featuring both a buy button the man-on-a-mission and a CTA to a product finder for those who still need some help deciding.

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