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What is a product configurator?
Product configurators fundamentally streamline the product creation process. These tools allow your customers to customize their desired product directly. Consequently, you receive ready-to-go instructions, boosting your business efficiency and ensuring timely delivery. Plus, it augments customer satisfaction as they can visualize and create their products based on their preferences, instilling a feeling of ownership.
Strategies to maximize the advantages of your product configurator
A product configurator takes ecommerce to the next level, as its features can boost sales, the overall store appearance and products customization. Embracing this tool could lead to an increase in orders as well as positive feedback from customers as it enhances their shopping experience. To truly make the most out of a product configurator, it’s essential to focus on improving its design to ensure it’s not only appealing but also intuitive for customers. Let’s take a look at 12 tips to improve the design of your product configurator. Let’s get started!
Designing for users
No matter what you’re designing, whether it’s a product configurator or something else entirely, it’s always important to think about the user first. After all, if the user can’t figure out how to use your product configurator or doesn’t have a good experience using it, they’re not going to convert. That’s why it’s so important to design with the user in mind from the very beginning. By keeping the user top of mind throughout the design process, you can create a product configurator that is both usable and conversion-friendly.
User-centered design is a process that puts the user at the center of the design process. This means that designers consider the needs, wants, and limitations of users when designing a product or service. By doing this, designers can create products and services that are more likely to meet the needs of users and be successful.
There are several steps in the user-centered design process:
Identify the user: The first step is to identify who will be using the product or service. It’s important to consider things like age, gender, location, and so on when determining the target user.
Define the user’s needs: Once you know who the user is, you need to define their needs. What are they looking for in a product configurator? What kind of experience do they want to have?
Develop prototypes: Once you have an understanding of the user and their needs, it’s time to start developing prototypes. These prototypes can be used to test different ideas and see what works best for the user.
Test with users: Once you have a prototype, it’s important to test it with actual users. This will help you see how they interact with the product configurator and identify any areas that need improvement.
By following these steps, you can create a product configurator that is designed specifically for your target user and their needs. This will improve the usability of your product configurator and boost your conversion rate.
A solution like Kickflip allows you to rapidly develop and deploy multiple versions of your product configurator, so you can easily test different designs, find the one that works best for your users and make quick modifications to improve it.
Categorize the information
Categorizing information is a way of organizing it so that it is easier to understand and remember. It's important, especially when you are offering more choices to the users.
If there's a lot of information and it's not well categorized, it can be hard for users to find what they're looking for and understand how everything fits together. This can lead to confusion and frustration.
Using Kickflip, you can easily create your custom program and categorize it with groups and questions, like the jewelry brand Camille Enrico did in the customizer below. You can also create filters to display a specific question when an answer is selected. This makes it easy for users to find the information they're looking for and understand how everything fits together.
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Your product configurator's look and feel is important to gain the customer's trust
People often judge the trustworthiness of a website based on its appearance. If a website looks professional and well-designed, people are more likely to trust it. This is why it’s so important to make sure your product configurator’s color scheme, font, navigation, and layout are all up to par. Using fonts and colors that fit well with your branding will ensure that your product configurator looks professional.
Kickflip comes with two professional themes that have been tried and tested. You can fully customize those themes using our theme editor, to make sure they fit with your brand.
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Use high-quality images and offer real-time product visualization
People are more likely to buy your product if the images look good. 67% of consumers say that the quality of a product image is “very important” when making a purchase decision. This is why it’s so important to use high-quality images in your product configurator.
It's also important to show a variety of angles of your product. People want to see what the product looks like from all sides so they can get a better idea of what they’re buying.
Finally, real-time product visualization is important to give users an idea of what the final product will look like as they are customizing it. This helps them to see how their choices will affect the final product and make sure they’re happy with their design.
Kickflip allows you to upload and manage all of your product images in one place. You can easily add as many views as you want and display a real-time product preview, so users can see exactly what they are customizing. If you want assistance creating product pictures for your configurator, you can hire one of our expert partners.
Use clear and concise language
When writing copy for a product configurator, it’s important to use clear and concise language. This means avoiding jargon and using words that are easy to understand. The goal is to make sure users can easily read and understand the text in your product configurator. Using clear and concise language will make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for and navigate your product configurator. It will also help to reduce confusion and frustration.
Optimize for mobile
More and more people are using their phones to shop online. 61% of consumers say they are more likely to buy from a company if they can purchase products or services on their mobile phones. This is why it’s so important to optimize your product configurator for mobile. Kickflip is designed to be responsive, so it will automatically adjust to fit any screen size. This ensures that your product configurator looks great and is easy to use on any device. )
Provide the users with useful information
Your product configurator should provide users with useful information that helps them make a purchase decision. This means including things like product and options descriptions. A product configurator is a great way to progressively disclose information to users. You can provide as much or as little information as you want, depending on the options you are offering. That way, the users don't have to go through a lot of text to learn about the product, they can simply get the information they need as they are configuring their product. Below is an example of how Swag describes their acrylic coasters
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Make sure your customer is aware of the price in real-time
When users are looking at a product configurator, they want to know how much the product will cost, and how much it will cost to add different features or options. You should therefore make sure that the total price is prominently displayed in your product configurator.
With Kickflip, the total price is dynamically updated as the customer chooses different options.
Provide an intuitive interface
Some users will prefer navigating through your product configurator step by step, while others will want to jump around and explore different options. This is why it’s so important to provide an intuitive interface that allows users to do both. Kickflip’s interface empowers you to create active areas on your product. When a user clicks on an area, the corresponding options will appear. This allows the most 'impulsive' users to explore your product configurator and find the options they’re looking for, in a very natural way. )
Enable social sharing
Allowing users to share their customized products on social media is a great way to increase engagement and generate word-of-mouth marketing. Kickflip allows you to easily add social sharing buttons to your product configurator. This makes it easy for users to share their customized products on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. )
Offer live customer support
Live-chat solutions, such as Intercom, are more and more popular when shopping on ecommerce sites. They provide a way for you to offer customer support without interrupting the user’s experience. This can be a great way to answer any questions users have about your product or help them with any issues they’re having, and ultimately increase conversions.
Don't give too many options
It might be tempting to offer a lot of options in your product configurator, but more isn't always better. Be careful, not to overwhelm users with too many choices. This can lead to choice overload, where the user is unable to make a purchase because they can’t decide which option is best. As a good rule of thumb, your users should not be spending more than 30-60 seconds configuring their product. Beyond that, there's a risk of losing their attention.
Conclusion
By following the tips in this article, you can design a product configurator that is easy and enjoyable to use, informative, and mobile-friendly. Kickflip’s powerful content management system will help you create a product configurator that meets all of these criteria and more!
If you want to learn more about how Kickflip can help you create a great product configurator, don't hesitate to reach out... or dive right in and start for free today!
Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash
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