🦒 Girav comes out on top with guided selling

A t-shirt is just a t-shirt — and therefore one of the easiest things to buy online. Bee Girav However, they know otherwise. In their beautiful office on Amsterdam's Keizersgracht, you'll soon discover that there is more to a “basic” item than you might think.

“I'll just show it to you right away,” says webshop manager Anna Maria Schulz as she opens Girav's website. “This is our basic T-shirt category. You can immediately see that there is quite a lot of choice. But why do you have to have the 'Sydney' and not the 'Bangkok'? That's hard to tell based on the photos alone. It's real overwhelming when you land on this page and have to choose a basic t-shirt.”

A unique basic t-shirt for everyone

“There are a total of 28 basics,” says E-commerce manager Sander van der Hoff. “We really are a T-shirt specialist, and because we are specialists, we have many different types. Each shirt has a purpose or time to wear it, for example under a shirt in summer or winter. Or with one or two buttons open.”

It shows: during a tour of the office, we see racks full of T-shirts of all shapes and sizes.

“We really have a T-shirt for every occasion,” says Anna Maria. “There are so many flavors and so many differences, it's also just hard for a customer to judge all that.”

That image was confirmed during user tests. That's why the team looked for a solution to help customers choose.

The choice for Aiden

“I understood from a former colleague at fonQ that they use Aiden's guided selling software and that they liked it,” says Sander. “But we had quite a long wish list of what the software should meet, so we started investigating that first.”

“For us, it was important that the product finder doesn't look like you're just tapping a few filters after all,” explains Anna Maria. “You really have to be taken by the hand as a customer.” The fact that the product finder could be made entirely in your own corporate identity was also an important prerequisite.

Sander: “And we attach great importance to an insightful report on the use of the product finder, without having to build separate links. In fact, we were only able to tick off these wishes with Aiden.”

The effect of guided selling on conversion

Within a week, the first guided selling app was live. Anna Maria: “The implementation was very easy. Thanks to the link with Channable, we were also able to get started right away and didn't need much IT to put it live on our website. Aiden itself, the backend, also works very easily and pleasantly.”

With so much wind, it was just as exciting when the impact of the guided selling app was not immediately felt. The design of the call-to-action on the lister page appeared to be in the way. “Previously,” Anna Maria points out, “we only had a banner bar without a button.” This turned out to lead to 'banner blindness': customers simply overlooked the guided selling app. “After an A/B test, we have now turned it into a 'Start product finder' button, which invites much more to click.”

With results. The conversion rate of choice aid users is as much as 25% higher than other visitors. Anna Maria: “We see that visitors actually purchase the recommended products.”

And that is exactly the intention. Good, personal service is the heart of the organisation, explains Sander. “We're focused on slow fashion. You buy high-quality basics with a very good fit from us.” For example, 'premium' and 'basic' definitely go hand-in-hand.

A product finder for polo shirts has now also been launched. Because while Girav was originally known primarily for its extra long T-shirts, the company now clearly looks beyond the length of their T-shirts.

Next step

In addition to the conversion uptake, Anna Maria and Sander also see other opportunities through the use of guided selling.

Anna Maria: “What's interesting, for example, is to see the differences between the Netherlands and Germany. In the Netherlands, many more customers choose to wear “under a shirt” and in Germany “just as a T-shirt”. With those insights, we can actually do something.”

The guided selling app also provides useful data at an individual customer level. For example, the link with Squeezely's customer data platform provides insight into which products a customer has received advice. “We're going to use that to make our marketing even more personal,” says Anna Maria.

In addition, the webshop is working on a new blog format. Sander: “Think of content like 'What's the best way to style a T-shirt? ' or “What's the best way to wash a T-Shirt?” By also offering a choice aid on these types of pages, we unconsciously send people back to the webshop.” A different way of guided selling. “A smart one, though, if you ask us!”