Cool Idea: Asking customers their Interests for Better Shopping Experience.

[lecarlb]

Hello,

I know this is possible because we've all seen it when creating accounts online.

I think it'll be cool if we asked customers their interests based on your product offerings. For example, if you sell sports merchandise. You could ask their favorite sports, favorite teams etc. at some point in the sign up process.

Implementing that idea could all shop owners to target customers that are interested in particular products. You're not likely to sell much San Francisco 49ers merchandise to a Dallas Cowboys fan. So why bother sending a useless email?

It reminds me of saving your car on an auto parts website and only the parts relevant to your car are presented. Also, it doubles as a filtration system.

What are your thoughts? This topic can be expanded.

[Dan Cole]

I agree....cool idea.

Dan

[ecartz]

It reminds me of saving your car on an auto parts website and only the parts relevant to your car are presented. Also, it doubles as a filtration system.

For this, you need to allow multiple cars. For example, my uncle owns a corvette that he mostly keeps in a garage and something more fuel efficient for everyday driving (plus his wife, my aunt, has her own car and his kids have their own cars). He might buy parts for ten different cars.

For the more limited thing that you are requesting, you could modify the customer data modules in S04e03 to do this. Or if that feels too hard, pay one of the certified developers to do it for you.

[raiwa]

There was a specific old Addon for this purpose available. “Year Make Model” if I well remember. If you wish, contact me and I’ll give you a quote for the update.

[burt]

A lonnngggggg time ago I was working on a pet-shop, the shopowner wanted to ask customers what pet(s) they own, so this was hardcoded into create_account;

[ ] dog
[ ] cat
[ ] rabbit
etc

This can now be done with no core code changes => Customer Data module

Coded up similar in admin/categories to allow shopowner to assign animal(s) to product(s).

Again, this can now be done with no core code changes => hook

Next up was to get a filtering system in place so that in product lists, the customer would get a new dropdown where he could select an animal owned, the product list would update to show only applicable products.

Unfortunately the client moved to different software before the filtering system was finished
So it never even got to prototype stage.

So far as I recall;

specifications <--- animals (in the example above)
specifications_to_products <--- link animals to products
customers_to_specifications <--- link customers to specifications

With those DB tables you can do some fancy filtering etc.

Obviously it doesn't have to be "animals". This is just an example.

There's the start of something close in the Addons area, one of the PRO addons.

[lecarlb]

Here's how I see it working, I'll use a sports merchandise site as an example:

1. A visitor decides to create an account and fills out form

2. At bottom of the form is an option to submit preferences, maybe via customer data module

2a. There are some tick boxes to choose 3 teams
2b. A typeahead search box to choose 3 teams just in case there are hundreds of teams.

3. Customer will be able to see the 3 teams chosen on their account page and able to edit. Let's pretend a customer chose the Dallas Cowboys as one of their preferences.

4. After that, here's where things get interesting. The Queued Emails could be useful here. Hypothetically, a Dallas Cowboys keychain is low stock, all customers that chose the Dallas Cowboys as a preference will receive an email with an alert. Or if new items are added to the Dallas Cowboys category, an email is sent.

Things to consider:

A. Preferences are actually categories (unless a developer views it differently)
B. Customers will be following categories similarly to the product notification system when an item is back in stock
C. If your store is busy, the host may be unhappy with the amount of outgoing emails.
D. Another game changer that can help with customer retention.
E. Will help shop owner better understand customer preferences and make adjustments.
F. From a layman's point of view, this could take some time to code.

@burt @ecartz @raiwa