16 Jan
When shopping online there is usually a gap between a shopper and merchant because of the lack of personal experience that you can find in any brick & mortar retail store.
Ecommerce personalization is the growing trend of online retailers providing personalized experiences to their users. This involves using customer data, personal messages, and product suggestions etc. to provide a tailored shopping experience. Business-to-Business (B2B) buyers demand such experiences that are enabled by integrating first-class technology that can transform organizational processes and structures all at once.
Let’s discuss how ecommerce personalization can drive better conversions and brand loyalty.
What is ecommerce personalization?
Ecommerce Personalization is the process of delivering personal experiences on ecommerce sites by dynamically showing content, product recommendations and specific offers based on previous actions, browsing behavior, purchase history, demographics, and other personal data.
Personalization is increasingly important to merchants seeking to, not only engage shoppers, but also to increase repeat purchases, drive sales and increase conversion.
It comes in many different forms from personalized product recommendations on a retailer’s homepage or product detail page, to cart-abandonment marketing emails to onboarding quizzes that provide a personalized showroom of items to consumers, among many other applications.
The benefits of personalizing ecommerce
Personalizing a customer experience will increase your average order value, returning customer rates and conversion values. Let’s take a look at the benefits of web personalization for business owners in ecommerce.
1. Increased conversions
Integrating web personalization in e-commerce helps to increase digital sales and conversion rates when leads are nurtured with targeted content. B2B companies that use this strategy have recorded a rise in sign-ups, lead generation, sales and general conversion. This happens when you manage to catch the attention of your buyers long enough despite the brief attention span of the average internet user nowadays. Any B2B company that incorporates web personalization will get qualified leads in addition to serving up what its buyers want.
2. Improved interaction or engagement
Web personalization means knowing about the interests or pain points of your buyers when it puts you in a position to serve them better. Customers who can relate to your site will end up spending more time on it and love to return in the future. Many customers prefer e-commerce websites that remember not only their details but their purchase information as well.
Personalizing marketing channels and your ecommerce stores will help you deliver the right content and products at the right time to the right customer. This can make a user connect with your brand better. When a customer connects more with a brand, they’ll engage more. This may be with your email campaigns, across social media or your blog section on your site. Improving engagement rates will improve brand loyalty and higher retention.
3. Precise product recommendations
This is perhaps one of the greatest benefits of web personalization. Recommendation engines generate precise results based on the effective data gathering. They make better predictions when more data can be collected on the visitor’s behavior, leading to a systemized arrangement of products that match this visitor’s exact preference.
The recommendation system saves real-time data by going through the browsing history of visitors and also systematically takes note of their individual behaviors throughout the session. Thus, each visitor is associated with a set of products that matches their preferences, and this has the potential to prompt a sale.
4. Selective information
Online users don’t like being bombarded with hundreds of products that they do not even want. This usually makes users leave a website. In this case, you may have lose them forever. Web personalization reduces that information overload by presenting curated, personalized content that is easier to comprehend. Targeted display of relevant products enhances the conversion process, while curated content excites users rather than frustrates them.
5. Efficient communication
This is possible when your company delivers the most suitable personalized content to the right customers at the right time. Personalized messages increase your reputation, as they promote meaningful interactions with every buyer.
6. Improved customer loyalty
According to a study 96 percent of marketers are confident that personalization plays a big role in the retention and loyalty of customers. Users feel as if they are highly esteemed when they notice that a business goes out of its way to serve them better by listening to them. Loyal customers are more likely to do more business with a brand they trust, as well as more likely to turn into ardent brand advocates and recommend it to others.
7. Customers in control of their experiences
One of the reasons why personalization appears to be very successful has to do with people’s innate desire to be in charge. Most individuals love to be in control of their own experiences, and this extends to the choices we make in every aspect of our lives.
With personalized e-commerce, visitors see only those products that appeal to their desires without unnecessary exposure to other products that do not pique their interests. When buyers aren’t cajoled by annoying ads, e-commerce conversions become easier, smoother and faster.
8. Enhanced search capabilities
B2B companies need to adapt to the desires of customers who want to explore the products and services on offer. This is essential if they want to retain their competitive edge. It calls for the ability to provide online searches with such criteria as product details, price, availability and ratings. With such searches in place, it will be easy to render personalized results, as they will be based on the browsing as well as purchasing histories of the buyers.
How to personalize your ecommerce Experience
On the surface, personalization looks complex. However, with the right planning and the right strategy, personalizing your ecommerce experience doesn’t need to give you a headache.
1. Onsite personalization
The trick to personalization is getting the right product in front of the right customer. And onsite personalization should be the first place you look at. If you have a large catalogue, you can personalize the homepage, recommended products and merchandise personalised products.
When used with creative UX designs, this can lead to significant increase in up-sells, cross-sells and average order values. Optimizing the product pages with personalized blocks will help improve up and cross sell opportunities. This should be A/B tested on a regular basis and improved periodically.
2. Onsite search personalization
We’ve already explored the importance of onsite search, but you can further improve the onsite search offering by integrating your personalization partner with your onsite search partner. Use personalization tools to weight search results based on what you know about the consumer.
3. Email marketing personalization
Personalizing email marketing is common practice. Greeting the user with their name in the email or even in the subject line can boost engagement rates. Creating email lists or segmentations with different metrics will help you tailor the content for the right user.
You can personalize the content even further by bringing in recommended products into emails. Integrating your email marketing platform with a personalization program can be extremely powerful.
4. Personalized advertising
The main goal of advertising is getting the product in front of the right customer. In order to stand out from competitor adverts you could add an element of personalization to your ads. Using personalized product recommendations to power ads will help you increase your ROAS.
5. Omnichannel personalization
Omnichannel is being able to provide a seamless user experience on all the channels that your audiences are using. This means personalization of any experience across all marketing channels and platforms. Personalizing in an omnichannel experience will help improve brand loyalty and lifetime value of your customers.
How to Get Started
Step 1: Understand where and how you want to personalize for your site visitors. This decision should also be made depending on where the most impact on revenue is to be had with personalization.
Step 2: Do your research on the available ecommerce personalization technologies and tools out there, and decide on a few to get you started.
Step 3: Assign enough resources to the project. Decide who will oversee this project and measure the gains.
Step 4: Define a long term personalization strategy and optimization process.
Step 5: Start to segment and personalize your site. See which areas of your site benefit most from personalization.
Step 6: Continue to track and monitor the results of your strategy. Optimize the process where needed.
Step 7: Once you’re happy with the strategy, begin to scale across channels.
Conclusion
After reading the benefits it’s clear that web personalization in e-commerce is essential, since it helps to naturally shift the attention of customers to the products that connect to them. Personalization can be favorable for your business as a reported 75% of consumers recognize and appreciate when brands personalize messaging and offers for them.