How great product discovery can help your brand become more sustainable

Efficient product discovery is a must for any modern ecommerce store. But beyond aiding conversion and boosting AOV, investing in this area of your store’s functionality may have wider ranging environmental benefits. This article explores some of the ways you can leverage product discovery to help your online brand become more sustainable.

It’s increasingly important for online retailers to fly the flag for sustainability. While ecommerce doesn’t demand the same resources that brick and mortar establishments require, it still comes with its own operational impact – especially in terms of carbon emissions.

Our image-heavy websites rely on a vast web of energy-hungry infrastructure, from data centres to transmission networks. When you start to factor in the carbon cost of importing, shipping and returns, it’s not hard to see how emissions start to add up.

Customers want to see brands do more here. Increasingly, value-alignment is a deciding factor when it comes to choosing who we shop with. When it comes to great customer experience, product discovery can do much more than improve conversion outcomes – it can help position you as a brand taking action and making a difference where it counts.

Let’s explore how…

Education is everything when it comes to environmental change. Largely, consumers want to do the right thing, and make the best choices – but often there’s a lack of knowledge or uncertainty about the most effective way to proceed.

Using content to help educate and raise awareness in your customers does more than assist them in making better choices – it also positions your brand as a thought leader within this increasingly important space.

Use blog posts or landing pages to communicate your brand’s commitment to good practises when it comes to sustainability. Additionally, you could consider providing educational content that helps to ensure greener shopping habit, for example, buying guides to help people make the right product selection, reducing carbon-heavy returns, or information about the additional carbon cost of un-consolidated next day deliveries.

Working with an advanced product discovery suite such as Klevu means that this content can be integrated into the broader experience of your store with content in search results. This keeps visibility high and places the content right at the feet of those customers who are actively expressing an interest in related item. There’s huge scope for creativity here.

Wasted products are the bane of any business; bad for profit margins and worse for the environment. Whether the items you sell are perishable, with a strict shelf life, or at the mercy of seasonal shifts in demand, it pays to have a clear idea of exactly what your stocking tactics should be.

A clearer idea of demand can also help keep the unnecessary transportation of goods to a minimum, as you buy in and store exactly what you need, at the right time, in the right place. .

The best way to help achieve perfect prediction? Getting a better, real-time impression of customer demand and shifts or patterns can help you to create a more efficient and less wasteful buying strategy.

By working with a product discovery suite such as Klevu, you’ll have access to a wealth of customer search data. This shows you real-time interest and intent, not only for the products you do stock, but also the products your customers assume you stock. It’s an invaluable window into demand, which if harnessed effectively, can revolutionise your buying strategy.

Finally, empower your customers to make more sustainable, climate-friendly purchases by adding product attributes that help flag up these better choices (vegan, recycled fabric, plastic-free etc.) By giving shoppers the ability to filter by product type that places more eco-concious selections front and centre, you’re paving the way for better product discovery andgreener consumer habits.

Klevu’s dynamic filtering functionality offers a lot of scope here. Ensure that whenever product listing pages are rendered, only the most relevant and applicable filter options are displayed. Not only does this keep pages looking clean and uncluttered (reducing the need for mobile scrolling), you’ll also be providing your customers with a visual reminder of the fact that they can select products based on sustainability, making better choices when presented with a range of products as the result of a product search.

Conscious consumerism is on the rise and it’s a trend that’s going nowhere. Ecommerce is coming under increasing scrutiny when it comes to doing more to reduce its impact upon the environment, and greenwashing simply won’t cut it with an increasingly educated and demanding public.

As a result, sustainability is becoming an increasingly important element of brand positioning – Klevu client Ecologyst are a great example of a brand doing this really authentically.

While there’s no expectation for every online retailer to undergo a full “eco” rebrand, incremental changes all add up to seismic change. Harnessing your ecommerce tech stack to help you drive better, greener practises both as a business and within your customer base, is a great way to ensure you’re making a difference.

Product discovery is a practical, profitable and positive place to start. Get creative in your leverage of Klevu, adding it to the arsenal of tech helping your brand towards happier customers, better sales and improved sustainability.