How to build a gift finder in PrestaShop to sell to undecided shoppers
· 3 min read
Gift shoppers don't know which filters to use or what to type in the search box, so they leave. Here is how to turn your catalogue into a few simple questions that lead to the right products, what to get right for it to work, and how The Perfect Gift sets it up in your shop.
The problem: the catalogue overwhelms people who don't know what to buy
A visitor is looking for a gift for someone else. They don't know which filters to use, the catalogue overwhelms them and search doesn't help because they don't know what to type. They browse for a while and leave without buying.
Faceted filters are built for people who already know what they want. Gift shoppers need what a good shop assistant would do: ask who it's for, what they like and how much they want to spend. And in campaigns such as Christmas or Mother's Day, these visitors are a huge share of traffic.
The solution: a gift guide built on questions
1. Ask with what your catalogue already has
The best questions come from your own data: colour, size, features, category, brand and price. That way answers are always values that exist and lead to real products, and there is no separate questionnaire going stale.
2. Use images and few questions
Three or four visual questions work better than ten. A colour is easier to pick from a swatch, a category from its photo, a brand from its logo. Always include a price question with ranges that make sense for your catalogue.
3. Choose which products each guide covers
A «gifts for him» or Christmas guide shouldn't include the whole catalogue: select categories, brands, price range and in-stock products only, without creating new categories or touching your products.
4. Avoid dead ends
If a combination of answers has no products, an empty page is the worst ending. It is better to relax the last answer and tell the customer it was ignored.
5. Give it its own page and send traffic to it
A friendly URL with its own title and description in each language can be linked from the menu, category banners, emails and social media in every campaign.
How The Perfect Gift helps
The Perfect Gift is our module for PrestaShop 1.6.1 to 9.2 (PHP 7.1 to 8.5) that builds gift guides with visual questions made from your own catalogue:
| Need | What the module does |
|---|---|
| Questions | About attributes, features, category, brand or price, using the products' real values and counts. «Save and suggest questions» creates them for you, including a price question with calculated ranges. |
| Visual answers | Own text and image per language or, failing that, the attribute colour or texture, the category image or the brand logo. |
| Selection | Categories with or without subcategories, attributes, features, brands, price, stock and products added or excluded by hand, with a live preview. |
| No empty results | «Relax answers» drops the last answers until products are found and tells the customer. |
| Page | Friendly URL and metadata in every language, header with desktop and mobile images, step-by-step or all-at-once questions, and results using your theme's product listing. |
| Campaigns | As many guides as you like, plus a banner on chosen categories linking to each one. |
| Performance | Its own product index, fast on large catalogues and independent of faceted navigation. |
You choose the products, the module suggests the questions and you only fine-tune texts and images.