5 Reasons to Add a Wishlist to Your eCommerce Website
40% of shoppers surveyed by Google think their shopping experience would be better if retailers offered a wishlist where they can save items they’re interested in. Spree 4.4 comes with a built-in wishlists feature so there is no need to develop it.
What is a wishlist?
Consumers use wish lists for a variety of purposes. They may be thinking about purchasing a product, but they’re not ready to buy it yet. Alternatively, an item is out of stock in their preferred color or size, and they want to keep track of when it comes back in stock. Or share it with family and friends in the hope that they might use it as an inspiration for birthdays or other special occasions gifts.
How wishlists drive sales engagement and customer retention
Adding products to a wishlist indicates a purchase intention, and users who have done so are higher in the sales funnel than people who just browse.
Wishlists are a powerful marketing tool as they:
- Bring more traffic to the website by:
- providing quick access to products that customers were previously interested in, which results in a higher rate of returning users to the website
- sharing them with other users helps bring new traffic
- Boost conversion:
- as soon as the desired product is back in stock, the customer can be notified of its availability
- wishlists provide data on the customers’ preferences that can effectively be used in marketing campaigns
7 top reasons to add a wishlist to your eCommerce site
1. More chances to convert customers into buyers
A common behavior amongst most website visitors is that they wish to buy only the products they need urgently rather than looking through all the items available on the website. By adding a wishlist to your online store, you can encourage them to add the products they hope to buy in the near future; hence the chances of converting a customer into a buyer increase.
2. Enhanced User Experience
Wishlists are additional UX features that can make the shopping experience more pleasant and interesting. In some industries like fashion, it is a feature that users even expect to appear on an eCommerce website.
3. Increased number of website visits
A wishlist on the company’s webpage encourages the users to re-visit the website where they have saved products. This leads to a higher rate of customer return, which has a positive effect on the conversion rate.
4. Customer satisfaction
Wishlists help customers quickly and easily track down the product they previously liked but were not ready to purchase.
5. More traffic from social media
Wishlists provide a new way for customers to share their desired products with others. Customers can add items from your website onto a wishlist and share them with their family, friends, and even followers through any social media platform such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. It increases brand awareness resulting in more traffic from various social media sources.
6. Learn about your customers’ behavior and estimate stock levels with real-time data
You can use the data from your customers’ wishlists to plan stock levels accordingly, especially before significant sales events, such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Christmas.
7. Boost sales with remarketing and product recommendations
You can show product recommendations within your store or ads to users who added products to their wishlists. It can be a similar product, one that is in stock, in the same color, or simply less expensive.
Best practices of implementing wishlists to an eCommerce site
- Allow users to add products to their wishlists on category pages (PLPs) as well as product pages (PDPs)
- Do not require users to create an account in order to start creating a wishlist
- Make it accessible from the top navigation bar
- Use a heart or star icon for product adding and make it clearly visible on the product page without the need to hover over it
- Enable users to easily share their wishlist to as many channels as possible (social media, email, etc.)
Examples of Wishlists in Spree Commerce stores
Maisonette
Maisonette is a children’s multi-vendor marketplace that integrates with inventory management systems of over 170 vendors.
On the PLP, a heart icon on the product image appears on hover. There is also a heart icon in the right-hand corner of the navigation bar.
Read Maisonette’s success story
Everlane
Everlane is a transparent online fashion business that redefines the fashion supply chain, sharing the true costs and factory details behind its products.
On the PLP, there is a visible heart icon on every product image.
Surfdome
Surfdome is Europe’s premier action sports marketplace.
On the PLP, a star icon appears when hovering over a product image. There is also a star icon in the right-hand corner of the navigation bar.
Mitchells
Mitchells is a family-run luxury fashion, online retailer.
On the PLP, there is a visible heart icon on every product image.
Garmentory
Garmentory is the leading eCommerce fashion marketplace dedicated to independent boutiques and emerging fashion designers that provides consumers with a new and curated shopping experience.
On the PLP, a heart icon appears when hovering over a product image.
Read Garmentory’s success story
Ratio Clothing
Ratio Clothing is an online platform with customized shirts and a machine learning fitting algorithm.
On the PLP, there is a visible heart icon on every product image.
Read Ratio Clothing’s success story
Milan Style
Milan Style is a luxury fashion marketplace with over 700K products.
On the PLP, there is a visible heart icon on every product image. They call their wishlist the Wardrobe and appear on the navigation bar’s left-hand side.
Read Milan Style’s success story
Urban Ladder
Urban Ladder is India’s leading online furniture marketplace with over 5,000 products and 35 categories such as wardrobes, sofas, beds, dining tables, storage shelves, etc.
A heart icon appears on the PDP next to the product name, as well as in the right-hand corner of the navigation bar.
Read Urban Ladder’s success story
The Fifth Collection
The Fifth Collection is an online trading platform that hosts a beautiful and very carefully curated collection of vintage and pre-loved luxury fashion.
There is a button with a heart icon on the PDP, just below Add to Cart.
Read the Fith Collection’s success story
Stylemyle
Stylemyle is an exclusive online fashion marketplace based on “discovery” from a highly selective curation of boutiques and designers from around the world.
On PDP there is an Add to Wishlist button.
Read Stylemyle’s success story
Wishlists for Spree headless commerce
Wishlists are a built-in feature in Spree Commerce as of the 4.4 version. Spree is now a fully headless eCommerce solution and you can use the Vue Storefront or Next.js Commerce starter packs for your storefront. Below is an example of a storefront built with Vue Storefront (lighting products & home decor marketplace) that mastered the wishlist feature to perfection.
Users can add products to their wishlist on both PLP and PDP. Logging in is not necessary to create one. Heart icons are visible on product images without hovering on them. There is also a heart icon in the right-hand corner of the navigation bar, exactly where it is expected to be.
Once users open their wishlist, they can also create a comparison list that allows them to easily compare the selected products’ parameters. On each step, they can also quickly add each product to the cart on each step.
Check out more examples of marketplace UX designs using Vue Storefront in the most popular industries: fashion, and home decor.
The wishlists feature comes out of the box with the Spree 4.4 version.
