Personalized customer experience has become a must-need in the modern marketing landscape. Here are a few ways you can personalize the experience of your eCommerce customers and increase your sales.

Creating a personalized experience for eCommerce has proven to be a worthwhile approach. According to Epsilon, a huge 80% of customers were more likely to make a purchase when provided with a personalized experience.

It’s proven to have boosted the value of sales, with almost half of shoppers revealing they have purchased a product that they did not initially intend to buy after receiving a personalized recommendation from a brand.

Ecommerce personalization methods
Source: https://www.scnsoft.com/blog/ecommerce-personalization

How is personalization achieved?

  1. It starts with collecting data from your customers, based on what you already know from them from previous interactions on your site, or from the way they are currently behaving.
  2. You then analyze this and personalize elements on your website so that they see content specially created for them, based on the interests and likes you’ve detected for them.
  3. This should result in better sales, and even create loyal customers. (44% of consumers say that they will likely become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience with a particular company).

An effective personalized customer experience is about adding personalization at every stage, from the homepage, all the way to the order form. Here are ways you can personalize your eCommerce store...

Personalizing your home page

The homepage is the new storefront. It should show off your best items, highlight any offers and of course, catch people’s eye.

The great thing about an eCommerce storefront compared to a bricks and mortar store is that you don’t need to create broad appeal. You can personalize it to each website visitor, making it even more compelling to click through to your product pages.

Here are some examples of how to do that:

Asos homepage personalization for customer experience
Source: asos.com

By Gender

If you sell gender-specific products, finding out the gender of your audience is key or you could risk half of your audience losing interest. Remember your customers’ preferences when they visit your website and what they typically browse.

ASOS defaults to showing me the women’s collections based on my purchase and browsing history.

Geographically

Any website can find out what country you are visiting from based on your IP address, and default to the detected location. However, you can use this to personalize the customer experience much more deeply than just changing the currency.

Below is an example from Missguided, a women’s fashion retailer.

Missguided geographic homepage personalization
Source: missguided.com

The image above shows the homepage for the US site. The caption is ‘College Calling’ referring to the fact that in the US, the new academic year is about to start for universities. The clothes shown are seasonal specific too, with end of summer, early autumn fashion.

Missguided homepage personalization
Source: missguided.com

This image shows the homepage for the Australian and New Zealand version of the site. Here the College Caption isn’t available (because the academic calendar is different). Instead, it shows ‘Spring is a thing’, referring to the fact that in the Southern Hemisphere, winter is coming to an end and spring is about to start.

Personalizing your product page

Once you’ve got a website visitor to click onto an item, you’ve got a chance to show a range of other products they might also be interested in. Here’s what you can do while contacts are on your product pages.

Recommendations

Recommended products on an item page can come in many forms, such as ‘you may also like’, ‘complete your look’ and ‘previously viewed’. All of these tactics are used (often in conjunction) in order for people to add more items to their basket, or to check out other items.

Retail giant Amazon does this well. The example shows a product item page. Along the right-hand side, you have typical products that you might purchase with a new laptop, such as anti-virus software.

Amazon.com recommendations


If you scroll down the product page, you see the recommended items, like in the example above. Here you have recommendations based on what other customers purchased or viewed.

Style or fit finder

Offering a quiz is a great way to add personalized elements into your eCommerce site. In the example below, the Dollar Shave Club asks the website visitor to ‘tell us a bit about what you like’ so they can create personalized recommendations.

Dollar shave club personalizations recommendations
Source: https://www.dollarshaveclub.com/‌‌

This creates great customer experience, it’s fun and you’ll get a chance to highlight the best products for your shopper.

Personalizing your checkout page

Your check-out page is your final chance to sell to your customers, and the more personalized the better. According to a recent report by Accenture, 91% of consumers are more likely to buy from companies who remember them and provide relevant offers.

Don’t forget!

Just like you showed recommendations on a product page, you can use your checkout process to highlight products too. A useful tactic is to create a sense of urgency, for example, ‘don’t forget these great items you looked at’, showing them their recently viewed items.

Crate and barrel checkout personalizations
Source: crateandbarrel.com 

In the example above, when you add an item to cart, you see product recommendations based on similar items that others have viewed.

Just ask

When someone checks out for the first time, they become a customer. This is your chance to try and learn as much as you can about them, so that next time, you can give them an even better experience.

Zalando regional customer personalization
Source: Zalando.com

This example from Zalando shows a pop up on their site, inviting their website visitor to select settings based on their region so that they could show them the correct currency and language.

While this example is on the homepage, a checkout page would be an ideal place to capture this information. You could incorporate a form into your checkout process where customers get the opportunity to tell you what they like so you can make their next experience even better.

In summary

Creating a positive shopping experience for your customers is key to making sales. The best experience you can give shoppers is one that is relevant, easy, and appeals to their individual tastes and needs. The best way to achieve that is through personalization, whether that’s based on behavior or demographics.

Every page of your website brings an opportunity to provide a personalized experience for your shopper. Personalization tactics should be embedded throughout your buyer journey, so they receive a tailored approach at every turn.

This is a guest post by Natalie Galceran from Typeform. Natalie is a marketing writer from the UK, specialising in B2B software for eCommerce, Education and marketing.

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