How online configurators can boost your sales
In an online landscape where competition is only increasing both at home and abroad, it’s more important than ever to personalise the customer experience as much as possible. This applies both in the way you approach the customer service task, but it also applies in the way you think about the entire experience that the customer should have.
An important place is in the personalisation of the product experience. In the early days of e-commerce, the most important thing was to have as good pictures of the product as possible. Today, you need to bring the customer as close to the experience they would have if they were standing in a physical store. At least if you want to provide the best and most personalised experience possible. One way to do this is by offering an easy-to-use online configurator to set up the product. If implemented correctly, this can help make the customer experience much better and more personalised. Below we give our suggestions on how you can implement an online configurator in the best way.
What is a product configurator?
Online configurator or product configurator is a broad term for a configurator that lets you put together and view a product online. In the early days of e-commerce, it was primarily the ability to choose a product in different colours or sizes. This variant option is of course still available on many product categories. However, there are also products that have been difficult to provide the right experience online. For example, if you have 10 different colours and just as many different sizes for a product, it can quickly become difficult to present the product clearly online. This is where an online product configurator comes into its own. You can give the customer a much more customised experience on the individual product and bring them closer to the experience they would have in a physical store.
Let’s take a modular sofa, for example, as a good example of a product that is very poorly suited to the traditional variant viewer. A modular sofa is, as the name suggests… modular. So the possible combinations are suddenly too many to list. Add to that the fact that these sofas often come in many different materials and colours. Suddenly it becomes even more advanced and difficult for the customer to grasp in a traditional view. It would also be very nice for the customer to be able to see if the sofa will fit where it was intended to be in the living room. A traditional “size guide” on the product page of the webshop is no longer sufficient.
Instead, imagine an experience where the customer can click on the modules of the sofa that they want. The modules can then be moved around to try different combinations. All the time with the option to see their living room via AR and also have the dimensions displayed directly in the experience. At the same time, materials and colours can be changed continuously without the customer having to reload and change product pages. The customer can then save and share the configuration with their partner, who can approve it before purchase. The customer can also choose to add to the basket directly and buy immediately. That’s the power of an online product configurator and that’s exactly what we’ve done for several furniture brands including Make Nordic and SOFACOMPANY.
The above for SOFACOMPANY and Make Nordic are examples of 3D configurators. They typically make sense for products where it makes the experience better to be able to get around the product. For example, if you sell paint, the need for a 3D configurator is not as great. Here, a static image with a wall that changes colour would make just as much sense and be easier to implement. It is therefore important that you look at your product and decide which type of configurator works best for it.
Does an online product configurator always make sense?
The above is of course a very obvious example because it’s obviously a use-case that makes sense. It’s almost a no brainer that if you have a modular sofa in your range, you need to offer the above experience, and if you don’t, you’re losing sales every day.
Of course, there are also products where the business case isn’t so straightforward or the investment doesn’t make sense in terms of the improved customer experience. A simple example is a laptop. Here, it hardly provides enough additional sales that the customer can see all the changes they make in the configurator “live”. A traditional variant selector will still be sufficient in most cases.
Use an online configurator to connect your webshop with the physical store
If you have both a physical store and sell online, an online configurator can be perfect for tying the two experiences together. A concrete example could be that the customer starts their shopping experience online but finishes it in-store. Traditionally, it has been difficult to connect that journey for you as a store. With a configurator, you can allow the customer to assemble the product online and later pick it up in-store and finalise the purchase there. This is a use case that SOFACOMPANY, for example, uses a lot. In the configurator we created for SOFACOMPANY, a “Save and share” function has been implemented. This is useful if you want to share the configuration with a family member or similar before buying, but SOFACOMPANY’s employees can also use it to help a customer in the store to finalise a purchase. Of course, the customer can also complete the entire purchase journey online if they prefer.
Another great use-case for physical stores is that you can have an iPad with the configurator running. This allows customers in your store to try putting your products together in different ways. This way, they are inspired and can better visualise the product the way they want it. This can help increase in-store conversion rates, something that has traditionally been difficult to work with and measure.
In cases where the product is too complicated or the risk of errors is high without the help of a professional (you as a company), an online configurator can also be a good start and an opportunity to create the right foundation before purchase.
What benefits can an online configurator give you as an e-commerce store?
If you as a business are looking at the possibility of getting a configurator for your products, it’s worth keeping in mind what you want to achieve. A configurator can give you many benefits, but it’s important, of course, that it provides the benefits and value that you want to get out of it. Below you can see a few of the most obvious benefits that a product configurator can bring to your store:
Increased conversion rate
Who doesn’t like increased sales? If you sell directly to B2C, an obvious area of focus is to increase conversion rates and this is something that a configurator can help with on an e-commerce site. By allowing the user to customise the product to their exact needs, the chances of them converting are much higher. This also makes for lower return rates. However, it’s important that you ensure a smooth purchase flow for the customer so they can add the product to the basket directly from the configurator. Otherwise, you risk losing sales rather than getting more of them.
Increased in-store engagement and upselling
Using a configurator in your physical stores can give you the opportunity to retain customers longer and give them better guidance through a customised solution. Offering the configurator on your website can increase conversion from online store to physical store and vice versa. If you allow customers to share the configured product across experiences of course.
Ensure a seamless online shopping experience
If you want to implement an online configurator or replace your existing one, it’s important to look at how you create the smoothest buying experience possible. For example, it’s no good if you create a really good configurator, but then the customer has to order the product via a carrier pigeon (you get the point). Of course, the configurator should be implemented directly in your purchase flow so that the customer is continuously updated on the price and can place the order directly in the webshop.
If you sell B2B, you may not offer direct purchase on the webshop or similar, in which case it is important that you let the customer save the configuration so it can easily be found later in the purchase flow.
See our 3D configurators in action
Get started with an online configurator
If you’re thinking about implementing a configurator on your website, it’s important that you consider which products it makes sense for and how you want the experience to be. We typically recommend that you start with one product line and roll out the experience here. This way you can start small and start reaping the benefits early on. It also makes it possible to test what works in your store on a smaller scale. Once the experience is right for you, you can roll it out to other product ranges.
If you need advice or a no-obligation quote for a solution, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us below.
