How HelloPets achieves an ROI of 31.74 by helping hesitant visitors choose

If you own a dog, you’ll know that finding the right dog food can be surprisingly complex. Every dog has different nutritional needs, influenced by factors such as sensitivities, previous experiences with food, age, size and taste preferences. This makes it difficult for pet owners to confidently choose the most suitable option.

This makes it difficult to choose the right dog food when a visitor browses a category page with multiple options or views a specific product on a product page.

Complex customer journeys and an overwhelming amount of choice lead to hesitation and hesitant visitors drop off. In some cases, visitors opt for a cheaper product simply because they do not understand that a higher-priced alternative would be a better match for their dog.

As a result, HelloPets faced two key challenges:

1. How can we better guide (new) visitors throughout their customer journey?
2. How can we make visitors aware of a better (and often more expensive) alternative?

The solution is simple: guide visitors through their purchase decision and help them choose with confidence.

HelloPets implemented multiple guided selling tools using Qonfi to support visitors in finding the right dog food, based on what their dog genuinely needs.

Guiding visitors: two real-life scenarios

While guiding visitors and helping them choose is valuable, this guidance only works if people are aware of it and if it is available exactly when they need it. At HelloPets, these moments primarily occur on the category pages and product detail pages, where doubt and comparison behaviour are at their peak.

On WOOOF, a subtle CTA now appears at the top of the dog food category page: “Looking for the best match? Start the guided selling tool.”

With guided selling, HelloPets is able to offer visitors advice comparable to an in-store experience. The tool asks simple, human-centred questions, such as:

• How old is your dog?
• Is your dog overweight?
• Is your dog sensitive to grains such as wheat and rice?
• Does your dog have any allergies?
• How active is your dog?

By engaging visitors in a ‘conversation’ through a series of targeted questions, HelloPets gradually builds a clear understanding of each user’s situation. Once these needs are defined, HelloPets can deliver personalised product recommendations and suggest the dog food options that best match the individual situation and needs of the dog.

Within the recommendation, only the most relevant products are presented, accompanied by a clear explanation of why each option is suitable for the dog. For example, because it supports weight management, is suitable for sensitivities, or matches the dog’s energy level. This provides immediate reassurance and reinforces the visitor’s confidence in their choice.

In addition to displaying the total price, the tool automatically calculates how long a bag of dog food will last and the cost per meal, based on the specific nutritional advice for the individual dog and its weight. This makes price comparisons (including with competitors) clear and transparent.

Through the guided selling tool, HelloPets actively engages in a ‘conversation’ with its visitors. Every interaction generates valuable data, as visitors proactively share their preferences and needs. This results in so-called zero-party data: data that customers consciously and voluntarily provide, forming a powerful foundation for more effective marketing automation and on-site personalisation.

All submitted answers together form a rich customer profile, including age, weight, sensitivities, nutritional goals and the best product matches. This data is automatically made accessible and connected to external applications such as Klaviyo and Google Analytics.

As a result, this data can be used to create new customer profiles or enrich existing ones. These data points are then activated in marketing efforts, for example within Google Ads remarketing audiences, enabling more targeted and relevant campaigns.

Within the product recommendation flow, visitors have the option to email the advice to themselves. With consent, HelloPets can receive a copy of this email. This copy is then automatically forwarded to Klaviyo, where the visitor is enrolled into an email campaign.

After a defined waiting period, the system checks whether the visitor has taken any action. If no action has been taken, a follow-up email is automatically sent, featuring the best-matching product recommendations.

As customer profiles are enriched or newly created, HelloPets gains a deeper understanding of each visitor and their personal preferences. This enables more effective on-site personalisation, such as directly displaying the most relevant product matches on category pages, tailored to each visitor’s individual needs.

Many visitors land directly on a product detail page, for example via Google Shopping. What happens next is actually quite strange. A visitor enters a fairly general search term and is then shown very specific products. As a result, the chance that such a product truly matches their needs is relatively small.

This is striking, especially considering that on average around 76% of e-commerce ad spend goes to Google Shopping.

When a visitor lands on the product page, a ‘validation check’ instinctively starts. They want to verify whether the product they are viewing actually matches their needs.

To determine this, the visitor is currently required to read all product content and technical specifications, interpret the ingredients, and translate this information to their own dog’s situation. This requires time, knowledge and trust. If the product is not a match, dropping off is easy and the customer journey continues in Google Shopping, with other providers.

In many cases, visitors are in need of additional reassurance. HelloPets therefore questioned how they could enable visitors to quickly check on the PDP whether the product they are viewing is suitable for them. And if it isn’t, how they could immediately suggest a better alternative.

For this reason, HelloPets implements the product check on the product detail page (PDP). The PDP features a CTA saying: “Is this food suitable for my dog? Start the check.”

The same guided selling tool is then initiated and HelloPets engages in a conversation with the visitor to identify their needs. This leads to two possible outcomes:

❌ No match? → The best alternative is automatically displayed and the visitor is guided further.

✅ Match? → Immediate confirmation is provided, removing doubt and reinforcing confidence.