Product Configurator Deep Dive: Standing Desks

And another stat on 360 degree and 3D photography, Home Depot actually saw a reported 35% fewer product returns after adding this type of photography to their catalog. Meaning that this type of photography likely helped visitors feel more confident and comfortable in the purchase, they were able to see more information about the item and that led them to feel more confident in purchasing and led to the fewer returns. What to keep in mind about product configurators is desktop versus mobile. We’re working on desktops all day, but we want to make sure that we’re also providing a great experience on mobile. You also need to consider how you display ancillary information, which I’ll showcase in some of the other slides. Making sure to answer common questions throughout the configurator before they arise and before a customer needs to leave and ask customer support or look through the FAQ. You need to make it easy to save, in case visitors want to save their progress and come back to it later. And make sure that the navigation of your configurator is intuitive.

Here for Herman Miller, we have their desktop product configurator. You can see on the side here this nice summary of the options that are already selected. This is a great way for customers to check back and review what options they selected. You can see over on the left is the table or the desk being built. You can get images of the front and the back. You can download the image and then over in the middle, you can see all the different options. Likely the default or the most popular option is what’s being selected, and then they have these tool tips here, likely to help make it clear the difference, for example, what a thin edge and an ease edge, which is likely something that comes up for people while they’re purchasing this product for Herman Miller. You can see here the tool tip shows a nice illustration and a short little description of what thin edged top is.

This is a great way to display this ancillary information and answer questions before they arise. For a standup desk store, you can see another example of a configurator. The cool thing is looking at a similar product type and looking at the different ways they set up their configurator, shows that there isn’t just one way to set this up. You can really see big differences. Up here, you can see the navigation, the steps, setting up the desk, picking accessories, and then a summary. You can also clear all of the options if you want to easily start over. And in this example, none of the options are selected by default, customers have to make a selection, which might also lead to less complaints about selections or what was picked because visitors here are having to make a conscious decision for each option.

You can also see on the left here, there’s a 3D option, which is quite cool. For Fully, a bamboo standing desk. You can see a very large image here, which is quite different from the Herman Miller option, which the desk image seemed to be quite a bit smaller. On the right here, you have info links for each option. For the finishes, the tops, the top size. Down here you get a sticky button for saving the pricing and completing the setup. And then you also get information here about additional pricing. That’s quite helpful. Visitors already know that an option is going to cost more. They don’t need to check the final price and then kind of have that sticker shock of, “Well, why is the price so much more now?” Not realizing that some of the options actually cost more.

For Fully, here is their configurator on mobile. It’s a bit the same, but you can see that the image is a bit smaller. This stays up at the top as you scroll through the different selections to pick from. And then this sticky area with the pricing, reviewing the design and saving for later is sticky as well. And then over on the left is an example of when you click the info button of what you’re going to see. This tool tip is very detailed. You get a lot of information on the bamboo and the other different tops like whiteboard, reclaimed laminate. For Uplift Desk, you can see a pattern for a lot of these desktop options. They have the image on the left and the selections on the right. That’s quite prototypical. And we see here they have the navigation, customizing desk, adding accessories, confirming selection. Up here, they have the pricing, reviews, some of their unique selling propositions as well as shipping information. And then you can scroll here to select the different desktop styles.

And it shows the pricing for different options. It has the tool tip here as well. And then it confirms with this blue outer rectangle that you selected this option. And it also confirms it up here that you selected this laminate walnut. And those are a few of the standing desk product configures that are available out there. This is just a few. There are plenty of them out there to take a look at. They showcase a wide variety of ways to set up the configurator, and it’s not likely that you’re also selling sanding desks. The reason to showcase these, is to show how configurators can be set up quite differently for the same type of product. It means it’s really important to really consider different layouts for your configurator. Don’t just stick with one. It might be good to do some wire frames, do some user testing or usability testing to see what works best for your customers. And that’s it for this video. Hopefully you learn something and get some inspiration from these configurator tools and I’ll see you in the next video. Thanks.