Internet Retailer – Gift Finder Helps you Find the Perfect Present

One of the knocks on ecommerce is the missing sales consultant. I am not talking about the indifferent clerk who seems to have no idea where anything is located let alone have an opinion or inclination to help you choose something significant – rather I am talking of the rare sales associate who has the knack to help find exactly what to get for a “hard to buy for” friend or relative.

Well, during the recent holiday shopping frenzy, our quotable friends at Electric Shopping used a solution is innovative, enjoyable and successful at increasing conversions for the various home, kitchen, and body products they sell from their pureplay ecommerce shop along with some intriguing trips and activities.

While there is no shortage of neat devices to browse through for your own benefit, choosing for your Aunt Mildred (I really have an Aunt Mildred by the way) is a different scenario than buying for yourself. This is where Electric Shopping’s gift finder comes in by helping you pick something with a wow factor that the person will actually enjoy rather another ho-hum product destined for strategic “re-gifting.”

The ES folks help shoppers with these perilous decisions by attaching emotive characteristics to the products and grouping product attributes by lifestyle and interests as well as more mundane variables like gender and budget.

For example … as a coffee enthusiast, I have more in common with other java aficionados regardless of age, than in with other 3o-something males who don’t have an interest in the magical bean beverage.

Anyhow, since Internet Retailer magazine wrote about it on December 15th, I’ll just hand the ball to them to run with and tell you more about Electric Shopping’s solution.

Electric drilling helps designer junkies and others find holiday gifts

To aid shoppers in their quest for just the right gift, and do so in a way that cannot be replicated in stores, U.K.-based Electricshopping.com Ltd. has added a gift finder this holiday season that enables shoppers to drill down until they find a web page with just the right assortment of merchandise.

The e-retailer has placed the gift finder where no one can miss it: in a large, screen-wide, red-and-white banner at the top of the e-commerce site’s home page. A single drop-down menu in the banner asks shoppers the first of many questions: For him or for her? The ensuing pages, adorned with holiday graphics, enable shoppers to further drill down by other variables, including type of gift, cost and recipient personality type. The numerous personalities include caffeine addict, fitness freak, gadget lover, ghost buster and designer junkie.

“To ensure we remain competitive in the crowded e-retailing market, we found it essential to provide customers a gift finder that makes searching and connecting with the perfect gift simple,” says Rob Levy, managing director at Electricshopping.com, which built the gift finder using tools in its e-commerce platform from Elastic Path Software. “Adding the gift finder feature to our site was effortless, and we are seeing a notable increase in sales.” (note: emphasis mine)

As always, you can check the article Electric drilling helps designer junkies and others find holiday gifts in its native habitat at Internet Retailer and also visit Electric Shopping for yourself (though the gift finder banner is currently replaced with a New Years Sale promotion). I’ll make a note to check in with them to see how the Gift Finder fared over the holiday as well.