Digital consulting on Shopify: How NATURTREU facilitates purchasing decisions

One advantage of brick-and-mortar retail is personal advice. Especially with complex products, personal conversations build trust and facilitate decision-making. Online shops typically lack this direct interaction. However, that doesn't mean comprehensive advice isn't available digitally.

With the right strategy, you can create orientation in your store to guide customers through complex product portfolios and assist them in their selection. Shopify offers you the ideal foundation for this.

NATURTREU demonstrates what this looks like in practice. Together, we've further developed the Shopify store to focus on digital advice: optimized product pages, an interactive product recommendation quiz, and a combinability guide. In this article, based on an episode of the tante-e podcast with our expert Esther, we provide insights into the implementation.

1. Digital purchasing advice as a success factor in e-commerce

Especially with product ranges with many variants and complex interrelationships, it's not enough to simply display products. Instead, customers are specifically looking for orientation:

• Which products suit my needs?
• How do individual ingredients work?
• Which combinations make sense – and which should I avoid?

Offline, expert advice is usually helpful: Salespeople guide customers, explain differences, offer recommendations, and help them make the right choice. Online, this direct interaction is missing—but it can be replicated digitally.

We particularly recommend focusing on advisory content in your shop when considering the following factors:

• Wide product variety with different application areas
• Different levels of knowledge among customers – some already know your products well, others need to find the right solution for them
• Complex interactions between products that, when combined, can have positive effects – or get in each other’s way.

With the right digital support directly in your store, you can overcome these hurdles. Customers receive targeted support, purchasing decisions are easier – and you benefit from higher conversion rates, increased shopping cart values, and fewer support requests.

2. Challenge: Understanding complex product portfolios

The larger and more diverse the product range, the more difficult it is for customers to navigate the store. NATURTREU exemplifies a typical challenge in the dietary supplement sector: The portfolio is constantly growing, covers numerous areas of application, and is not always easy for customers to keep track of.

This complexity manifests itself on several levels:

1. Diverse customer entry points

• Some start with a specific value from the blood count, e.g., “Vitamin D deficiency.”
• Others are generally looking for support for their immune system or more energy in everyday life.
• Others want to be inspired without having a clear goal in mind.

2. Products requiring explanation

• Not all products fit together – incorrect combinations can even be undesirable.

3. Danger of choice overload

• A wide selection can quickly become overwhelming.
• Without structure and support, many users tend to postpone the purchase decision – and abandon the buying process.

If you recognize yourself in these points, it's crucial to bring structure and clarity to your product range. The key is to enable different entry points, accommodate individual knowledge levels, and provide guidance without overloading customers with information.

3. Strengthen purchasing decisions through optimized product pages

Product pages play a central role in digital consultation. They are often the point where customers decide whether they gain trust or remain uncertain. To help visitors to the NATURTREU shop quickly understand which product is right for them, we have specifically optimized several elements together:

1. Smart product titles

Each product name combines two perspectives: the symptom or area of ​​application and the active ingredient. This allows customers looking for a specific ingredient (e.g., vitamin D) as well as those who start with a specific need (e.g., "more energy") to find the right starting point.

2. Recommended intake and times of intake

Clearly structured instructions for taking the medication – for example, in the morning or evening, on an empty stomach or after eating – provide orientation and avoid misunderstandings.

3. FAQs for each product

Common questions are answered directly on the product page. This reduces uncertainty and lowers the likelihood that customers will abandon the purchase process or have to contact support.

4. Visual support

Product images and explanatory diagrams complement the texts and help to make complex content quickly understandable.

These elements create a product page that not only informs but actively advises. The interplay of clear wording, helpful additional information, and visual support ensures that customers feel welcomed – regardless of whether they come to the shop with specific knowledge or a vague need.

4. Personalized advice at NATURTREU through product quizzes

At NATURTREU, not all customers immediately know which product they need. Some start with a vague feeling ("often tired"), others have specific goals ("strengthen their immune system") or are looking for inspiration. To address these diverse starting points, the shop uses a product recommendation quiz in its Shopify store.

The quiz guides you step by step to the right recommendation:

1. Entry via goal or symptom

Users choose from areas such as immune system and defense, sports and fitness, or metabolism.

2. In-depth questions

Depending on the selection, specific questions follow, such as stress levels, susceptibility to infection, or dietary habits.

3. Individual product recommendations

At the end there are concrete suggestions – individually or in combination – that can be purchased directly in the shop.

The quiz has two functions at the same time:

• Advice for customers – they receive orientation and feel understood without having to click through the entire product range.
• A database for the brand – the responses can be connected to email marketing tools like Klaviyo, allowing target groups to be segmented and content to be delivered even more precisely.

The implementation is deliberately simple and intuitive: interactive, quick to complete, and with a clear product recommendation at the end. This makes digital advice tangible and creates a shopping experience that closely resembles that of an online retailer.

5. Implementation of the compatibility guide at NATURTREU

A key feature of dietary supplements is that they don't work in isolation, but often in synergy. Some products enhance each other, while others are best avoided. This is precisely where the compatibility guide in NATURTREU's Shopify store comes in.

The functionality is divided into two levels:

1. Integration on the product page

• Users can click directly on the selected product to check which other products are compatible with it.
• A pop-up displays products that can be optimally combined (including an add-to-cart option) and indicates products that cannot be combined (without a request to purchase).

2. Own overview page in the shop

• Interested parties will find a detailed overview in the Help & Contact section.
• There you can select each product and check which others it harmonizes with – or not.

The advantages are manifold:

• Orientation and trust: Customers know that they won’t make any wrong combinations.
• Higher shopping cart value: Visible but unobtrusive cross-selling with clear benefits.
• Relief for support: Many questions that would otherwise be asked to customer service can be answered directly in the shop.

With the combinability guide, NATURTREU creates a digital consulting approach that mirrors the individual expert advice from offline retail online – transparent, reliable, and scalable.

6. Technical implementation of digital consulting on Shopify

Shopify offers the ideal technical foundation for bringing digital consulting services and targeted user guidance to your store. At NATURTREU, we chose a customized approach that's perfectly tailored to the platform. We utilized many of Shopify's native features and avoided standard apps.

The implementation is based on three central pillars:

1. Metafields for product logic

• Each product contains metafields that contain information such as combinations, times of intake and recommended dosage.
• This means recommendations are displayed dynamically without having to maintain data twice.

2. Collections for filtering and searching

• Existing Shopify collections (e.g., immune system, metabolism) serve as filters in the product recommendation quiz and the product compatibility guide.
• This way, the existing setup is used effectively instead of creating new structures.

3. Theme editor for content and maintenance

• Static information such as texts, layouts and filter options are maintained in the theme editor .
• This separation reduces maintenance effort and ensures that the system remains scalable even with new products.

A key advantage: Data already available in the shop is reused. This prevents redundant entries, simplifies updates, and makes the system flexible for future expansion.

Overall, this resulted in a technical framework that makes the consultation process appear simple and intuitive in the frontend, while remaining robust, efficient, and easy to maintain in the background.

7. Measuring success: KPIs for digital consulting in the online shop

After you have integrated digital consulting into your shop, the question arises how you can track the success of the new features.

At NATURTREU, we use certain key figures and observation points to assess the impact of our measures:

1. Shop metrics (conversion & shopping cart value)

• Add-to-cart rate: Is the quiz being used and do the recommendations lead to more shopping cart entries?
• Conversion rate: Is the proportion of visitors who actually buy increasing?
• Average shopping cart value: Do customers add suitable additional products more often thanks to the combinability guide?

2. Relieve the burden on customer support

• Analysis of whether the number of inquiries regarding intake, combination or product selection is reduced.
• Feedback from the support team as a direct indicator of how understandable the new consulting features are.

3. User behavior in the shop

• Tracking how intensively quizzes and combinability guides are used.
• Observe whether visitors complete the pages or abandon them early.

4. Continuous optimization

• Results are incorporated into further development: from more precise product recommendations in the quiz to more detailed explanations in the compatibility guide.

The aim is to continuously improve the quality of advice and further refine the digital service.

8. Conclusion: Category pages as a strategic conversion and SEO lever

With the right approaches, the added value of personal advice can also be reflected in e-commerce. NATURTREU demonstrates how expertise and guidance can be translated digitally:

• Optimized product pages provide clear information and build trust.
• The product recommendation quiz takes customers by the hand and guides them to the right choice.
• The combinability guide ensures transparency when taking multiple medications and makes product combinations understandable.
• The technical implementation on Shopify ensures that these features are efficiently maintained and remain scalable in the long term.

The result: more orientation for customers, fewer hurdles in the purchasing process, and clear effects on conversion, shopping cart value, and support effort.

This shows that digital consulting is not a “nice-to-have,” but can become a decisive growth lever for your shop and a true unique selling point.