5 must-have Product Discovery features for 2023

Product discovery features essential for success:

Optimise internal search results page

How you present your search results or product listing page (PLP) has a significant impact on your online sales. The strategy behind which products you choose as well as where you place them on the page can be the difference between a purchase and abandonment.

To win customer loyalty, step into the shoes of your shoppers, and merchandise your ecommerce store in a way that is relevant to every customer. Personalising the customer journey based on data and browser behaviour shows you understand and care about their experience to keep them coming back for more.

For example, Superdry doesn’t stock Levi jeans. But, instead of showing no results, the AI can suggest alternatives that would suit what the customer is looking for. Shoppers are never met with the dreaded ‘0 results’, improving their product discovery journey and increasing conversion.

Must-haves:

• Use complex synonyms to speak your customer’s language and make sure your shoppers are never left without answers.
• Structure your product ranking and use personal business custom ranking to achieve business goals.
• Enhance your search results by applying merchandising rules.
• Use AI Search for long tail keywords, complex queries, and multi-lingual queries to eliminate zero results.

Convert with powerful product detail pages (PDP)

PDPs lead directly to a sale, so it’s the place for you to showcase all the relevant information a shopper might want to make the purchase. To encourage shoppers to convert you can highlight if a product is low in stock and use social proof by featuring product ratings.

Aside from promoting the initial product, you can use PDPs to cross-sell and up-sell your catalogue. Is the product part of a bundle? Do you sell the other products in the images? Make additional personalised recommendations in your PDP that appeal directly to your shopper’s unique buying trends using the powers of AI.

Must-haves:

• Provide the most suitable alternatives to each product
• Cross-sell the right complementary item
• Recommend personalised and relevant content

Personalise your emails with 1-to-1 recommendations

By sending highly targeted content to your shoppers such as discovery emails with a selection of products and a personalised landing page, you can increase your email CTR by +40% and build customer loyalty.

For example, birthday emails with exclusive discounts and follow-up emails inviting customers to complete their purchases can have a measurable impact on your ROI. Alternatively, why not feature relevant product recommendations in the return confirmation email?

If you have the data, you can inspire and convert your shoppers using a variety of different strategies.

The French fashion and home & garden retailer, LaRedoute, has seen a 40% increase in CTR directly from email recommendations by providing highly targeted content for each shopper profile. They have also capitalised on key customer milestones and personalised follow-up activity.

Must-haves:

• Apply personalised product and content recommendations strategies to your marketing emails, order confirmations, and returns confirmations.