What is guided selling?

Key takeaways about guided selling

• Guided selling uses product finders or assistants to help online shoppers choose the right product, boosting conversion rates.
• It replaces the missing “in-store expert” in e-commerce, reducing stress, uncertainty, and abandoned carts.
• Guided selling works by asking relevant, plain-language questions and giving tailored and nuanced recommendations.
• The main benefits are higher conversion, fewer returns, time savings for customer service, and higher customer satisfaction.
• It turns an online store from a digital warehouse into a personalized shopping experience.

Guided selling for e-commerce

An online store is like a large digital warehouse, filled to the brim with products. The virtual shelves are labelled with different categories of products, such as sweaters, car tires, or insurance policies.

Products in these categories are then typically further sorted into specific boxes. For example, a box for yellow sweaters in size M, winter tires in size 205/55 R16 91H, or health insurance policies with a €685 deductible.

Super handy, of course… if you know exactly what you're looking for and you understand which product features are most important and relevant to you. You simply find your product, add it to your cart, and pay to have it delivered straight to your home, maybe even on the same day #easypeasy.

Customers who can’t decide, won't buy

But if you're not exactly sure what you're looking for – the product specifications mean nothing to you, the available products are all very similar, or you have to buy something for that aunt you don’t know that well – then a standard e-commerce website won’t work for you. 

Why? Well, if you're not an expert in a particular area, you won't know what’s important and what to look out for. Without that inside knowledge, it can feel almost impossible to pick the right product from so many seemingly identical ones. And even if you do buy something, you may still worry if it was actually the right choice.

That’s because the way we’ve built our online stores over the past few decades isn't conducive to actually buying products and services. We moved from brick-and-mortar stores to e-commerce websites, but left behind a pretty crucial element of a great shopping experience: the helpful assistant who can actually help you choose.

As a result, today’s e-commerce model really only serves the “man on a mission”. For everyone else it causes procrastination, buyer anxiety and dissatisfaction. This, in turn, hurts businesses, because customers who can't decide, won't buy.

Guided selling or guided buying?

Most people that visit your website don’t buy. Not because they're not being shouted at loudly enough, but because they simply don't know what to buy. If we want e-commerce to work better for consumers, we need to help them along the way. This means taking them by the hand at the exact right moment in their buying journey. And that’s what we call guided selling.  

Guided selling is the new way for e-commerce stores to help their customers find the right product. Although guided buying would actually be a more accurate term. That’s because guided selling is all about giving customers the confidence to buy from your store by taking away choice paralysis. It's the online version of the question a store associate would naturally ask when customers enter the brick-and-mortar store: 

Hi, can I help you with anything?

Why guided selling?

Brick-and-mortar stores consist of two essential elements:

1. A physical space where products are advertised
2. Staff who advise customers to find their best match

Advertising and advising: a proven combination. Yet for 25 years, online stores have focused almost exclusively on the first element: advertising products, and lots of them. That's fine if you know exactly what you're looking for, but if you don't, it can be incredibly difficult to find the product you actually want to buy.

That's where guided selling comes in. Guided selling reduces the stress of figuring out which product to buy, helping customers decide on the right option for their needs. The result? Increased sales, better customer insights, and stronger customer loyalty. Basically, an online advice experience that feels just like being in the store.

Want to learn more about it? 📖 Check out our book: Customers who can’t decide, won’t buy.

How does guided selling work?

Let's say you're looking for a new mattress. Normally, you’d spend a lot of time browsing online to understand the options and find the right mattress for your specific sleep preferences.

With guided selling, you’ll simply use a Mattress Finder and answer a few easy questions like:

• What position do you sleep in?
• Do you suffer from back or neck pain?
• What is your weight?
• Do you have a budget in mind?

After submitting your answers, you’ll immediately receive a tailored recommendation on which mattresses best suit your needs and why.

That’s how guided selling works for consumers, in a nutshell. But how do you design a good product finder for your online store?

✅ Discover our checklist to create the best product finder for e-commerce businesses.

Different types of guided selling

Although guided selling is a relatively new concept in e-commerce, we can already distinguish between different types of assistance. The two most commonly used are either filter based or score based product finders.

A filter based product finder guides the customer through the usual filters that are already available on the category page, by posing them as questions. This also means that it’s often rather technical:

• Which filling weight do you want for your mattress?
• What spin speed for your washing machine?
• What kind of sound quality for your headphones?

For each question, a filter is applied and the list of available products becomes shorter. Without context on which combinations are possible, this can often lead to a user being confronted with an ‘empty advice’ showing 0 matching products. That’s why a score based product finder, where each product us weighted according to the user’s full combination of answers, is often preferred.

📖 Why a filter-based product finder is far from ideal

3 great guided selling examples

A well-designed product finder feels effortless for the customer, asks the right questions at the right time, and delivers spot-on recommendations.

Below, we’ve gathered some of our favorite guided selling examples from leading e-commerce brands across different industries. They show how smart product finders can blend design, psychology, and technology to guide customers toward the perfect choice. Because the magic is in the execution. 

Guided selling for electronics & appliances: The MediaMarkt smartphone finder

Not sure which smartphone to get? MediaMarkt has built a friendly Smartphone Finder that takes you from total uncertainty to a confident purchase in just a few clicks.

The interaction is simple and to the point. No overwhelming tech specs, just everyday language and features you can actually relate to (“Never need cables to charge your phone again” sounds a lot friendlier than “Qi-compatible charging”).

The best part? At the end, you get a clear “This is the one!” moment with a recommended phone, matched to every need you’ve ticked off. It’s satisfying, fast, and keeps you from scrolling endlessly through a sea of almost-the-same devices.

Guided selling has proven to make a significant impact for electronics and appliances stores, as they often deal with technical specifications and complex products. Giving personalized digital advice structurally boosts conversions in this industry.

💬 Learn more about the cross-continental guided selling strategy of MediaMarkt

Guided selling for health & nutrition: The XXL Nutrition protein guide 

With nearly 30 protein shakes to choose from, XXL Nutrition knows it can be tough to find “the one.” Their protein guide tackles choice overload head-on with a clear, 6-question flow.

It starts by asking about your main goal: building muscle, losing weight, improving performance, or boosting overall health. From there, it gets more specific about flavors, ingredients and even lactose sensitivities.

The tone is straightforward and approachable, skipping heavy nutrition jargon in favor of plain explanations. At the end, you get a tailored shortlist, complete with best-match labeling, clear benefits, and even a discount incentive to nudge you over the finish line. Interestingly, this flow is directly connected to the customer data platform to enrich customer profiles.

Well done team XXL Nutrition! Your product finders are a great example of guided selling for health and nutrition e-commerce stores.

💬 Discover how XXL Nutrition achieves an XXL conversion

Guided selling for garden & outdoor: The Knives & Tools axe finder 

With 350+ axes in stock, Knives & Tools knows that finding the right one can feel like chopping through a dense forest. Their axe finder asks about your needs, budget, and style, then delivers spot-on picks in seconds. 

The tone is friendly, pragmatic, and playful (“Can’t see the forest for the trees?”), steering clear of overly technical terms in favor of plain advice. The result is a tailored shortlist of recommendations, each clearly marked as a best match with relevant product details and an easy click-through to the product page, no guesswork, no endless scrolling.

It’s the perfect example of guided selling for garden & outdoor stores. It saves time, cuts through confusion, and gets you the perfect axe faster.

The benefits of guided selling in e-commerce

The biggest advantage of guided selling is that you support a customer in the process of making the right choice. This saves them a lot of time and effort, which is extremely valuable - for them and you.

In the offline world, the very reason some brick-and-mortar stores have existed for years, even decades, is that customers “get such great help” there. Of course, that’s great for those customers, but it also has a direct impact on business results.

In our case studies we see that guided selling leads to:

1. Better conversion: When customers can easily find products they want, they buy faster, and often add more items to their cart. 
2. Time savings for customer service: Customers can help themselves instead of chatting or calling an agent (and they usually prefer this self-guided approach!).
3. Fewer returns: If customers buy products that better fit their needs, they’re less likely to request returns. 
4. Higher customer satisfaction (NPS): Customers appreciate it when you put their needs first and help them make choices faster, more easily, and with confidence.

Guided selling essentially extends a helping hand to customers who are shopping online, transforming a basic digital warehouse into a personalized shopping experience. Good for the customer and for the store.

📖 The big opportunity that online stores are missing

Get everything you need to win with guided selling

Customers are tired of browsing endless websites, searching for that one perfect product in a digital haystack. There’s a smarter way: guided selling. This page gave you a glimpse of what’s possible - now it’s your turn.

Try our interactive demo store or book a free demo to see how Aiden can elevate your e-commerce strategy and help customers find exactly what they need, faster.

We promise your teams will love it, too.

📖 6 tips to make your good product finder great