Buying Group Wish Lists & Favorites

Wish Lists and Favorites

Some incredibly useful and consumer desired features are wish lists and favorites. A community buying group often purchases the same items over and over again, or consistently seek out similar products. Having an organized way to navigate to desired items and mark possible repurchases can be helpful to both the buyers and sellers; one gets the benefits and ease of use, while the other can retain happy customers.

A common scenario a buyer may find themselves in, is having an item they wish to purchase, but need to review with others or compare with other products. They may wish to have an item marked to later return to, making navigating throughout the marketplace easier and more efficient.

Access to Wish Lists

As we briefly touched on, collaboration within wish lists can be incredibly helpful. You can have multiple users have access to a wish list, making team collaboration easier. Maybe there's an event happening, or the company is relocating. Having a team-wide list to keep track of needed items could help the team avoid missing essential items as well as any possible over-purchasing.

It’s also helpful being able to share the wish list with different roles, such as finance, management, etc. You can also find ways to share the list with someone outside the company. It's also always possible to create a private wish list. This is helpful for shared accounts, as a consumer may want to have it visible only to them. So, allowing the user to determine who exactly has access to the wish lists is an important feature, as there are a multitude of scenarios with different needs due to the wish list’s versatility.

For example, a big purchase may have to go through a large chain of employees. It starts with whoever adds the desired items to the wish lists. They may think it’s the perfect item for a project, so it is essentially put on the list for review. This is the basis for a phone call between members to ensure the item meets the desired functions. It could go even further if it needs approval from finance. Overall, the possible scenarios are endless.

Furthermore, having the buying group provide a list of items they are interested could help on the selling side of things. There are a lot of manual calls to customer support. It would be very possible for the customer support team to take the conversations and move the key points from those discussions into a documented set of recommendations that then get presented on the site through resources all based on the data collected by their wish list. They can help guide the consumers to what they are looking for, or it can help vendors better understand their wishes.

Favorite List Functions & Features

The wish list isn’t the only type feature you should consider implementing. Favorites are a unique way to go because instead of adding the items to a specified list, users can quickly toggle something as one of their favorite items, immediately putting it onto a separate “Favorites” list. These items would stay on this list even after purchase, making it incredibly useful for purchasing the same item over and over.

Having the easy option to simply check your favorites list before checkout to ensure nothing is missing can be very useful to buyers. It also helps out the vendors, as it encourages happy customers to become repeat customers.

This is a little bit different than a wish list or another form of list, like a purchasing list. This is actually a generic kind of list, but that does not mean it isn’t beneficial. These lists are incredibly user friendly, as it’s really simple to add items to this list. Typically, there's a little heart icon that shows in the item's detail view and this allows the end user to quickly toggle something and add to that list.

Another key feature of the favorites list is that users should be able to move items, possibly into another list, like a wish list or purchase list, or into the shopping cart. Ultimately, the idea is to make it really easy for the end user to add items to their favorites.

Again, it is quite possible to send transactional emails regarding items a buyer has favorited. This can be an individual email to an individual user letting them know that something's on sale or if there’s a special promotion, such as buy one get one. It could also be used to inform them if an item on their list is nearly out of stock, or maybe if something was just restocked. Offering users these capabilities allows them to have an easy way to track the items they care about, providing a beneficial tool when making purchases.

Clarity Marketplace Experts

Needless to say, there's a lot of depth to simpler functions like wish lists and favorites. They can add to the value of the marketplace for your group purchasing organization, and we encourage you to evaluate those options up front when you're looking at different vendors for your upcoming eCommerce platform.

Of course, feel free to reach out to us as Clarity if you'd like to chat or review with our team. We offer a complimentary walkthrough of our Clarity eCommerce platform and can show you demos of any of the features you may be considering. We encourage you to look at our system as well as the resources below to try to evaluate the best fit for your organization. We look forward to working with you.