- DISCIPLINE
- Guided selling & recommendations
- DECIDES
- Which product, from a hard catalogue
- WORKED EXAMPLE
- PP-AV Projector Selector, live
- ISSUE
- 2026
Guided selling that makes the choice obvious.
When a catalogue is large, technical or full of rules the customer can’t be expected to know, browsing fails quietly — they leave without buying and you never hear why. A guided selling tool asks a few plain questions and returns a short, reasoned shortlist, then hands it straight to checkout.
SHEET 01 — THE PROBLEM WITH BROWSING
More filters don’t help a confused customer.
Filters assume the customer already knows what to filter for. Faceted search, longer spec tables and more categories just move the work from your business onto someone who came to you precisely because they didn’t know the answer.
Guided selling inverts that: it asks about the customer’s situation in language they already use, then does the technical translation for them — and shows the reasoning, so the recommendation is trusted rather than second-guessed.
SHEET 02 — WHAT WE BUILD
Four shapes of the same idea.
Most businesses need one or two of these, chosen by where customers currently get stuck. Every example is a tool we built for our own retail business and still run today.
- Plain-English questions in, a short shortlist out
- The reason each item was chosen, shown
- For catalogues too large or technical to browse
- Actively proposes the best fit, not just what matches
- Handles “I don’t know” without a dead end
- Rules held as data, editable without a developer
- Stops the wrong combination before checkout
- Cheaper than the return, far cheaper than the review
- Offers a working alternative, not just an error
- A light, on-brand path into a considered purchase
- Captures a qualified enquiry even when they don’t buy today
- Hands off to basket, saved quote or CRM
SHEET 03 — UNDER THE SURFACE
The recommendation has to be commercially correct.
A shortlist that looks smart but suggests an incompatible or unprofitable combination costs you more than no tool at all. We encode your real product logic — compatibility, availability, margin, trade rules — as data the business can maintain, and keep pricing authority on the server.
Because the customer’s answers are stored once in a shared profile, a needs finder, a selector and a compatibility check behave like one system that remembers them, rather than three tools asking the same questions. It’s the same architecture behind the connected PP-AV showroom.
Build levels and pricing are on the configurators overview; add-ons including an AI advisory layer sit on the schedule of rates. For products where finish and form drive the decision, see 3D product configurator development.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Guided selling questions, answered plainly.
What is guided selling?
Guided selling replaces "browse the catalogue and hope" with a short set of plain-English questions that lead the customer to the right product, along with the reason it was chosen. It is most valuable when the catalogue is large, technical or full of compatibility rules the customer can’t be expected to know.
How is a recommendation engine different from a filter?
A filter removes products that don’t match; a recommendation engine actively proposes the best fit and explains why, handling the customer who doesn’t yet know what to filter for. Filters need the customer to already understand the options — a recommendation tool doesn’t.
Does it integrate with our ecommerce platform?
Yes. The tool reads your product data and hands the chosen items off to a WooCommerce or Shopify basket, or to your CRM/quote system via API, so a recommendation becomes an order without the customer starting again.
How is this different from a chatbot?
A generic chatbot answers questions; a guided selling tool is a structured, rules-based journey grounded in your actual products, pricing and compatibility, with a defined commercial outcome at the end. We can add an AI advisory layer on top once that structured foundation exists, so recommendations are explained from real product context rather than generic chat.
How much does a guided selling tool cost and how long does it take?
A focused guided selector typically starts around £2,500 as a foundation build. An advanced single tool with added rules, pricing and quoting or one integration runs £7,500 to £15,000, and a professional multi-tool suite £15,000 to £30,000 depending on integrations and quoting. Every build starts with a fixed-price Prototype Sprint (£625–£3,000, one to four weeks) that is credited against the full build.
START HERE
What question does your sales team answer most often?
That question is usually the tool. Send it to us with your product and how you sell it today, and we’ll tell you whether a selector, a recommendation engine or a compatibility check fits — and prove it in a fixed-price Prototype Sprint.