The Secret to Converting Web Leads - Product Configurators

Up to 80% of purchasing decisions are made as anonymous website visitors. Visitors are filling out less web forms and enabling more privacy protections in the browser.

So, what secrets are your competitors implementing to convert their anonymous web traffic to leads?

"The secret to converting more anonymous web site visitors is providing online product configurators."

A product configurator gives web site visitors the ability to visualize and personalize your products or services, getting them one step closer to imagining themselves as buyers.

The automobile industry was one of the first adopters of configurators, providing rich online user experiences to customize car colors, interiors, wheels, and packages. Customers can truly visualize what they were going to buy… all online without going to a showroom.

In a post-COVID era of remote work and shopping, the ability to interact with a product prior to purchase is what separates progressive organizations from their competitors.

Extending CRM and CPQ

​​When the term “CPQ” (Configure-Price-Quote) first emerged, the idea of customer self-service product configuration was a core part of the CPQ vision. The measurement of success for any CPQ implementation is the ability to move beyond data grids, page layouts, and spreadsheets; and provide an interface that is as close as possible to experiencing the actual product or service.

This ensures customers receive exactly what they expected, reduces quoting errors, and reduces the time from lead to opportunity close.

From a CRM perspective, anonymous web site visitors appear as Leads in Salesforce once minimum interaction criteria are met. Fingerprinting details, like IP address, browser agent, and a cookie-based session are recorded on the Lead.

Slack messages can help celebrate minor wins that notify internal teams when web visitors interact with a configurator. From a resource planning and forecasting perspective, it can be useful to view the "shopping carts" of what anonymous visitors are configuring.

Product Configurator Playbook:
​
​1) Deploy an interactive product configurator or pricing calculator

2) Anonymous visitors interact with configurator

3) Online activity is logged in Salesforce

4) Prospect submits "Request Quote" form

5) Anonymous lead is converted and assigned for follow-up and quoting.

Anonymous web visitors interacting with configurators are captured as Leads for analysis.

GenWatt 3D

Every Salesforce Consultant, Systems Integrator, and Administrator is familiar with the GenWatt product. GenWatt is an example product pre-installed in every demo version of Salesforce CRM.

This live site demonstrates both 2D and 3D GenWatt product configurators using iDialogue.

As visitors interact with the 3D configurator; leads, quotes, and opportunities are updated in Salesforce in real-time (contact me for a demo. You're guaranteed to love this!)

2D and 3D product configuration models.

Pricing Calculators

Configurators are not exclusively for product manufacturers.

SaaS, software, subscription, and usage-based tech companies effectively deploy online calculators to help customers explore "What If?" scenarios. Like "what if I upgrade from the 1GB of free storage plan to 50GB?"

Amazon Web Services (AWS) pricing calculator is a great example of using transparent pricing and a range of products to help prospective customers understand the potential costs at various scales. https://calculator.aws/

Measurements

Implementing a product configurator brings a whole new set of metrics to the lead generation process.

In addition to traditional website visitors, product configurators introduce:

• ​Configurator Interactions
  
• Avg Time in Configurator
  
• Configurator unique sessions per visitor
  
• Configurator conversions
  
• Time to Conversion

Lead Scoring
Once converted, configurator interactions can be integrated with demand generation solutions like Demandbase to provide advanced lead scoring signals.

Implementation

Web development tools have come a long ways since the early days of building websites.

Using tools like iDialogue "Experience Builder", product configurator development is conducted side-by-side with CRM products, pricebooks, and Leads so that everything is integrated from the beginning.

The waterfall of implementing a successful product configurator project is well known, and can be reliably estimated and implemented within a reasonable time frame.

iDialogue Studio - Experience Builder

Learn More

Configuration API and Project Implementation framework:
https://docs.i-dialogue.com/#/configurators/overview

SDK and source code for the GenWatt demo:
https://github.com/pacificapps/configurator-sdk

I'd love to learn more about your business and discuss how a product configurator can have an impact on your Marketing and Sales processes.

Contact me anytime at mike@getpacificapps.com to discuss.