👉 The big opportunity that online stores are missing now: digital advice

Want to buy a shoe? At Zalando, you could choose from 28,987 female couples in 2020. Nice watch for him? Choose one of the 1,272 options that de Bijenkorf offers you. Winter is coming, but luckily, we have 747 scarves and 201 pairs of gloves. Equipment broken? Choose from 485 phones (Coolblue), 441 TVs (MediaMarkt), and 214 washing machines (BCC). A new mascara, concealer, lipstick or blush? Get started with Douglas's 4,504 products. And bring something for your child too. Bol.com has 402.063 toys.

An online shop is a large digital warehouse, filled to the brim with products. The statements include name plates for the categories that can be found therein: sweaters, car tires or insurance, for example. These products are often sorted. And they are regularly in the right container. A box for yellow sweaters in size M, winter tires size 205/55 R16 91H or health insurances with a refund policy and a 685 euro deductible.

Super handy, of course... if you know what you're looking for. And if you understand which product features are important and relevant to you. You find your product, add it to your shopping basket and pay. Before you know it, it will be delivered to your home, maybe even the same day. #lekkermakkelijk

But if you're not sure what you're looking for, if the specifications mean nothing to you, the products are minimally different, and if you have to buy something for that aunt you don't know very well at all, e-commerce works downright badly.

Because you're not an expert in that area at all. You don't know what's important and what to look out for. Without that expert knowledge, it is quite a task for you to make a well-founded choice in that homogeneous product mass. And then you often still don't know if it's the right choice.

The way we've built our online stores isn't conducive to actually buying things and services. We went from offline stores to online stores, but left behind an essential retail component: staff to help customers. As a result, only the “man with a mission” can score successfully online. For everyone else, the current e-commerce model doesn't work. In fact, it causes stress, procrastination, dissatisfaction and fear of buying.

Because customers who are unsure do not buy.

For years, we've been trying to solve the wrong problem. We are doing even more and even better publicizing of products, but let it assisting lie on the left. For the abandoned cart, we saw numerous' solutions', such as nudging and retargeting, but they barely make a dent in the conversion rate. And that is not surprising. A nudge, such as an offer that is about to expire or a limited inventory, encourages customers to buy quickly. A (re) targeted ad reminds the customer of her unfinished search for a coffee maker. But these ad optimizations do not focus on the customer and their question, wish or problem.

People don't buy. Not because they're not being shouted at loud enough, but because they just don't know well enough what to buy. If we want to fix e-commerce, we need to help customers. We need to take them by the hand at the right time and assist them in their search for a suitable product.

And there's a name for that: guided selling. If you would be guided buying actually a better term. This is because the idea behind guided selling is to give customers the confidence to buy, by offering help with stress over choice. It's the work that Jeroen does in his bright blue T-shirt in the physical store. It's the still missing online version of that classic entry:

Over the past decades, advice in the physical store has proven to be enormously valuable. Store visitors are happy to be helped. After all, they themselves have insufficient knowledge and no desire or time to gain that knowledge and become experts. But they do want to make a good choice. Asking an employee for advice is a short cut. It costs no money and little time and effort, but offers maximum results. Provided, of course, that the employee is friendly, objective, knowledgeable and thoughtful.

This personal, professional help is so effective that store visitors 90 percent are more likely to buy after receiving expert advice. And bring good, knowledgeable employees 69 percent more money in the drawer than their less capable colleagues.

Advice therefore works like a charm, but personal attention (friendliness, hospitality, interest) and expert and professional advice are almost exclusively the domain of the physical store. Only 10 percent of consumers associate these qualities with the webshop.

The future: personal digital advice

The future of e-commerce is a highly personal experience. This is what it's about - surprisingly - not about products, but about people. Digital advice is therefore an important missing puzzle piece in the current e-commerce landscape. With personal advice, you can easily take customers by the hand and help them find the right product quickly and painlessly. Just like in the physical store.

And you don't have to do this out of charity: the business results don't lie. Just take a look at our case studies in which renowned brands such as Goossens Living and Sleeping and Simon Levelt were able to increase their conversion by tens of percent.

This article appeared earlier in our book: Customers who are unsure don't buy. This is about why e-commerce is broken and why “advice” is the missing puzzle piece in the e-commerce landscape. Theory and practice are discussed and six leading Dutch brands (e.g. Bever, Swiss Sense and Mediamarkt) share their lessons.