Gift Finder Tools: Why Your Retail Business Should Consider Them

Easter. Mother’s Day. Valentine’s Day. Father’s Day. Christmas. With a celebration date popping up every other month throughout the year, it’s understandable that the average customer can find themselves in a bit of a quagmire when it comes to finding gifts for loved ones (not to mention the birthdays, anniversaries, and occasions that call for congratulations that pop up in between the traditional celebrations).

Because of this, it is imperative that retail brands assist their customers in making the gift finding and purchasing process as easy as possible. Gift finder tools are a great way to do this.

What is a gift finder tool?

A gift finder tool is exactly what its name suggests: it is a digital tool implemented on a website in order to make it easier for customers to find products they should consider in their search for suitable gifts.

An example of a gift finder that proved successful for one of the world’s top beauty retail brands is the one creative digital agency SMACK built for The Body Shop.

When the world renown brand wanted to make life easier for stressed out customers during the Christmas period (which accounts for 40% of the brands annual sales) while also increasing sales, it reached out to SMACK to build a gift finder tool that would make it easy to find the perfect gift and encourage conversion.

After a thorough analysis of audience and product data provided by The Body Shop, our creative digital team built a bespoke gift finder tool that was not only intuitive and captured the festive season, but also streamlined the entire process from gift finding to purchasing.

The result was a significant sales boost aided by the 87% unique visits to the gift finder section of The Body Shop’s website and the 290,000 user sessions that were generated.

The client was so happy with the Christmas version, they asked SMACK to adapt the tool to support sales during other key seasonal celebrations including Mother’s Day and Ramadan.

On top of that, the gift finder tool was expanded to more regions across the globe.

The Body Shop gift finder tool is available to view in action on YouTube.

The above is an example of a gift finder tool benefiting a brand. Here are a few more benefits of utilising a gift finder for your online retail business.

Benefits of having a gift finder tool on your e-commerce website

Gift finder tools offer excellent digital customer experience

With digital now such a staple of marketing, every business that wants to be successful has to have a digital marketing plan in place. What this has meant is that the average consumer is exposed to online marketing from a plethora of brands trying to get their attention and win their custom.

Providing excellent digital customer experience is a way some of the world’s biggest — as well as new and smaller — retail brands have been able to stand out from the crowd.

Digital customer experience is the total of all the digital interactions a customer has with a business. While a customer using a gift finder tool might seem like a singular interaction — therefore making it a single digital experience — it still adds enormously to a customer’s all round digital customer experience.

Great digital marketing campaigns and tools are those that — although may focus on a particular aspect of a brand’s strategy — contribute to the overall perception of a company. A customer may enjoy the ease of using a gift finder tool so much that it elevates the positive emotions they have towards a company.

Although one can view the use of a gift finder on a retail website as an isolated digital experience, gift finders (especially the type SMACK built for The Body Shop) don’t exist or work in a silo. Which leads to the next gift finder benefit…

Gift finders cover several stages of the customer journey

Unlike, say, a singular page on a website that allows customers to put in some details so that the dress the customer has already decided to purchase is the right size, a gift finder tool can start being used before said customer even knows that it’s a dress she’s going to purchase.

What this means is that a gift finder tool can be used right at the start of the customer journey map i.e., awareness and research. The finder tool raises the customer’s awareness of a product that could be a potential gift while simultaneously contributing to the research stage by providing information on the product.

But a gift finder tool is also part of the consideration stage, allowing for the addition of potential products to a short list which then contributes to the customer’s decision of which is best (aided by reviews, product details etc.,).

Once the customer has decided on their perfect gift, the gift finder tool then moves them along to the purchase stage of the journey via links to the basket/purchase page.

Finally, once the customer has made the purchase of the gift and it’s delivered on time as promised, they will be more likely to shout from the rooftops (or social media) how great their digital customer experience with your business was thanks to that fantastic gift finder tool, therefore moving them to the advocacy stage.

Gift finders are great for repeat business

One of the reasons Amazon (a company we were lucky enough to work on a Christmas digital campaign for) has become the biggest online retailer in the Western hemisphere is because it gains repeat business, which is often aided by its ‘wish list’ functionality on the website. It’s worth mentioning this was a feature that SMACK also incorporated into The Body Shop’s gift finder tool in our own unique way, along with a Christmas stocking filler option that helped drive more sales through upselling.

Back to Amazon. This writer will put his hands up and admit that he’s added an extra £15 or so to his shopping basket total because he’s added items previously added to a wish list (mostly books though — surely, they will be worth ten times more when everything goes digital? No? Damn).

But even when a customer doesn’t make a last-minute impulse purchase like yours truly, the fact a group of products a customer is interested in are logged somewhere they can easily access provides convenience and a stress-free gift finding experience.

This then means when it’s time for them to buy a Christmas gift or a Valentine’s Day symbol of love or a “I know you’ve spent thousands on your wedding so here’s one less thing you need to worry about buying” present, the customer will return to your online store to make a purchase.

An additional benefit a gift finder tool offers is the opportunity to upsell.

A gift finder is a truly fantastic digital marketing tool that ticks many boxes when it comes to providing a digital experience that can lead to higher sales, repeat business, and customer satisfaction. Contact SMACK, one of London’s most creative digital agencies to find out how we can help your retail business achieve those marketing objectives.