🦒 Girav comes out on top with guided selling

"A T-shirt may seem like a straightforward purchase — one of the easiest things to buy online. However, at Girav, they know better. In their beautiful office on Amsterdam's Keizersgracht, you quickly discover that there's more to a 'basic' item than meets the eye.

"Let me just show you," says online store manager Anna Maria Schulz as she opens Girav's website. "This is our basic T-shirt category. You can immediately see that there's quite a lot of options. But why should you choose the 'Sydney' over the 'Bangkok'? That's hard to discern based solely on the photos. It can be really overwhelming when you land on this page and have to choose a basic T-shirt."

A unique basic t-shirt for everyone‍

"We offer a total of 28 basics," adds e-commerce manager Sander van der Hoff. "We are truly T-shirt specialists, and precisely because we specialize, we offer many different types. Each T-shirt has a purpose or occasion to wear it, for example underneath a dress shirt in the summer or winter. Or with one or two buttons open."

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

"We truly have a T-shirt for every occasion," says Anna Maria. "There are so many tastes and differences, it's just difficult for a customer to assess all of that." User tests soon confirmed this perception. That's why the team set out to find a solution to help customers choose.

Choosing Aiden‍

"From a former colleague at fonQ, I understood that they were using Aiden's guided selling software and that it worked well," says Sander. "But we had quite a long wishlist of what the product finder needed to fulfill, so we started by researching."

"It was important for us that the product finder doesn't feel like you're just ticking a few filters," explains Anna Maria. "You really need to be guided as a customer." Also, the ability to fully customize the product finder to match our brand identity was a crucial requirement.

Sander adds, "And we value having insightful reporting on the usage of the product finder, without needing to build separate integrations for that. These requirements we could only check off with Aiden."

The impact of guided selling on conversion

Within a week, the first product finder was live. Anna Maria says: "The implementation was very easy. Thanks to the integration with Channable, we were able to get started right away, and it didn't require much IT effort to launch on our website. Aiden itself, the backend, is also very intuitive and easy to work with."

With so much smooth sailing, it was a bit nerve-wracking when the impact of the product finder wasn't immediately noticeable. The design of the call-to-action on the lister page turned out to be a blocker. "Previously, we only had a banner bar without a button here," points out Anna Maria. That resulted in 'banner blindness': customers simply overlooked the product finder. "After an A/B test, we've now added a button 'Start product finder,' which is much more inviting to click."

With great results. The conversion rate of guided selling users is a whopping 25% higher compared to other visitors. Anna Maria adds: "We also see that visitors actually purchase the recommended products."

And that's precisely the goal. Providing great, personalized service is at the heart of the organization, explains Sander. "We focus on slow fashion. You buy high-quality basics with a very good fit from us." With that, 'premium' and 'basic' do indeed go hand in hand.

Meanwhile, a product finder for polo shirts has also been launched. Because while Girav is primarily known for its extra-long T-shirts, the company is clearly looking beyond the length of their shirts.

The next step

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

Anna Maria: "For example, what's interesting is to see the differences between the Netherlands and Germany. In the Netherlands, many more customers choose to wear it 'under a dress shirt,' while in Germany, the option 'just as a T-shirt' is most popular. With these insights, we can really take market-specific marketing actions."

Guided selling also provides valuable data on an individual customer level. Through the integration with Squeezely's customer data platform, it becomes clear which products have been advised to a particular customer. "We will use this to make our marketing even more personalized," says Anna Maria.

Finally, Girav is also working on a new blog format. Sander says, "Think of content like 'How to best style a T-shirt?' or 'What's the best way to wash a T-shirt?' By offering a product finder on these pages as well, we subtly guide people back to the store." A whole new form of guided selling. "A pretty smart one, if you ask us!"