March 22, 2023
Scheme title: Expectations for personalization climb
Data source: salesforce.com — State of the Connected Customer, 2022
of shoppers get frustrated if companies don’t deliver personalized interactions
McKinsey
of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations
Salesforce
projected recommendation engine market size by 2025
Industry Arc
Here is a rundown of the most effective methods and technologies to use for delivering personalized experiences across the customer journey.
Companies can make certain content and layout elements in the store dynamic, like calls-to-actions, shopping cart, pop-ups, information bars, and product recommendations, and tailor them to users’ preferences, behavioral patterns, purchase history, and geolocation.
Another option for B2C and B2B brands is to use ecommerce-specific machine learning tools to analyze customer data and give recommendations on items similar to what customers have looked at or added to their shopping cart, encouraging them to buy more.
Ecommerce companies can create continuous shopping experiences across different channels, enabling customers to pick up their interaction with the brand where they have left off and effortlessly continue shopping via their channel of choice.
By analyzing the vast amounts of customer data collected from various sources, retailers can accurately segment their audiences and craft targeted marketing campaigns that will resonate with each specific customer group.
Retailers can integrate their ecommerce platforms with predictive analytics tools to continuously analyze customer behavior, competitor pricing, and market trends as well as forecast and adjust costs in real time, offering customers the optimal prices.
Retailers can ensure a personalized experience for customers by sending newsletters or promotions based on their most recent views, purchases, or items in their cart. In addition, email automation tools can send different types of emails to specific audience segments if triggered by a customer’s behavior, such as a completed order or not interacting with the brand for some time.
Ecommerce companies can enhance their digital store’s search engine with search query auto-completion and personalized query recommendations based on customers’ location and previous search history. This will help users quickly find necessary items and increase their purchase intent.
This personalization tactic helps reduce cart abandonment rate by identifying users’ location, automatically filling in fields on the checkout page from the customer’s previous purchases, and offering a one-click checkout option.
By using matchmaking algorithms, ecommerce businesses can determine items frequently purchased together and the additional products customers are most likely to buy. Based on this information, companies can set up their digital stores to suggest lists of related or complementary goods during the product search or at the checkout, making customers feel understood and increasing the value of a sale.
Dynamic ads can automatically show customers the most relevant recommendations based on their demographics, preferences, or previous online behavior. Brands can target these ads at visitors who abandoned their cart, offering them discounts or encouraging them to complete the purchase.
Utilizing content created by customers can be a winning personalization tactic because people appreciate candid content they can relate to. According to recent research by Stackla, 79% of people say user-generated content highly impacts their purchasing decisions. This is why retailers can post customers’ photos, videos, and reviews to show the products in action and foster a stronger connection with the brand.
B2C
B2B
The customer base can be segmented into personas that clearly reflect the needs and interests of the particular customer cohort, making it easier to create a relevant personalized offering or a marketing campaign.
Customer bases are typically smaller but customer personas are more complex since they represent the entire company or its departments. Providers need to factor in target companies’ global objectives and combine them with particular departments’ needs when marketing their products.
B2C
B2B
Product catalogs, though extensive, follow simpler structures and contain a relatively small range of typical characteristics.
Product catalogs tend to be more detailed, containing in-depth product explanations aimed at different verticals, departments, and decision-makers.
B2C
B2B
A person interacting with the ecommerce platform is the end-customer, so personalization focuses on their wants and needs.
A person interacting with the platform is rarely the end customer but rather a business representative. Thus, we should primarily consider the business objectives of a targeted company.
B2C
B2B
Mostly fixed, though it can be slightly optimized depending on the market trends, the buyer’s location, season, etc.
Usually customizable depending on the size of the purchase, the customer’s long-term goals, and other negotiable parameters.
One of the most illustrative personalization examples is Amazon’s “Frequently bought together” section. The intelligent system analyzes items in the cart and suggests additional products at the checkout when they can be bought immediately, making the customer journey more satisfactory and increasing the per-order value. Other options include offering products in a bundle at a lower price and recommending similar items based on users’ shopping history to help make the best purchase. This personalization strategy allows Amazon to generate significant revenue from the recommendation system.
Image title: Similar product recommendations on Amazon
Data source: Amazon
To provide a first-class shopping experience and drive loyalty among long-term customers, MAC Cosmetics automatically reminds returning buyers to buy products they have previously purchased and may need to replenish. Knowing the average lifetime of a product, the company can predict when the product will be used up and shows a replenishment banner upon each repeat visit. With a 67% click-through banner rate, this tactic helps prevent brand switching and maximize customer lifetime value.
Image title: MAC’s product replenishment reminder
Data source: coveo.com — MAC Cosmetics Revolutionizes Virtual Retail with Coveo-Qubit
Podbike, a German seller of e-bikes, wanted to increase the signup rate and invited those who subscribe to the newsletter to a test drive event in Germany. The offer popped up in a responsive lightbox window on specific website pages and was targeted only at users located in Germany. As a result, the company’s conversion rates increased from 4.46% to 13.3% within one geotargeting campaign.
Image title: Podbike’s location-based pop-up offer
Data source: optinmonster.com — How PodBike Gets 18.22% More Email Subscribers with GeoTargeting
To make their online shopping level with the in-store experience, this luxury women’s fashion brand implemented a “Shop the Look” feature. The feature suggests products that go with the item the customer looks at, acting as a friendly salesperson and helping the customer see the complete look. This way, the brand builds trust and makes customers want to return not only for the quality of the products but also for the experience.
Image title: Hobb’s recommendation on the product description page
Data source: coveo.com — 10 Ecommerce Personalization Examples To Boost Profits in 2023 (+4 Benefits)
Campus Protein wanted to implement the same personalized vitamin recommendation experience from their brick-and-mortar stores into their website. They introduced a site-wide best sellers page updated in real-time, which brought a 50% increase in click-through rates to product pages and the doubling of conversions.
Video title: Success Story on Campus Protein
Data source: youtube.com
ASOS, a large marketplace, optimized its on-site search to help customers find what they need among products from 850+ brands. The platform can predict and adjust queries based on the letters a customer is typing and recommend the most relevant products on category and search pages, ranking them by similarity with the customer’s previous actions.
Image title: ASOS search recommendations
Data source: ASOS
SeaVees, a California-based footwear seller, publishes customers’ featured photos on their homepage and product description pages to promote products and strengthen customer engagement. The retailer links Instagram photos submitted via a branded hashtag and arranges them into a curated collection of shoppable posts on the store’s homepage, with each post connected to the respective product page.
SeaVees homepage: a branded hashtag section with customers’ photos from Instagram
A product page with the customer’s photo featured on the homepage
SeaVees homepage: a branded hashtag section with customers’ photos from Instagram
A product page with the customer’s photo featured on the homepage
Data source: SeaVees
Retailers should know their website audience well to kick off personalization. For this, collect data at each step of the customer journey using web analytics, email marketing tools, and pop-ups to segment users into cohorts and create a personalization strategy for each of them. Using this comprehensive data, companies can determine high-value customers and personalize their experiences further.
Raw customer data accumulated from an ecommerce website and other channels should not remain siloed, or you cannot use it for personalization. Therefore, retailers should adopt appropriate technologies to integrate, structure, and make data available for the personalization algorithms.
Shopping experience can be personalized at various touchpoints along the buyer’s journey, but they still should complement one another and serve the same purpose. Therefore, online retailers should create customer journey maps to identify areas where personalization can be incorporated most effectively and which tactics should be used for each customer group.
While ecommerce companies tend to provide personalized experiences predominantly through their website, they usually have several communication channels, such as social media, live chats, emails, and in-store. The best way is to ensure the same level of personalization for every customer interaction across all of the brand’s channels to create holistic experiences and strengthen customer relationships.
Today, retailers can choose from numerous ecommerce tools to meet their personalization needs. Here is an overview of popular platforms used to foster customer-tailored online shopping.
Salesforce is an all-in-one cloud-based ecommerce platform for building intelligent shopping experiences and orchestrating sales channels. Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers a plethora of out-of-the-box features for delivering highly-personalized customer service.
Qubit is an AI-powered digital experience and customer personalization platform for creating advanced techniques to understand, recognize, and influence users.
Nosto is an AI-powered commerce personalization platform that helps businesses customize their website content, product categories, recommendations, and pop-ups. It can be a perfect fit for fast-growing ecommerce stores aiming to build an omnichannel presence.
Clerk.io is a cookieless personalization platform that provides customers with relevant product and content recommendations throughout their journey and helps the adopters grow sales. It is suitable for small ecommerce businesses with limited experience and budget.
This all-in-one website personalization platform delivers data-driven personalization, performance tracking, and actionable insights for ecommerce businesses of all sizes.
Bloomreach is an ecommerce experience and data analytics platform that enables brands to show their customers the right product in the right place and at the right time. It offers a suite of tools that helps companies deliver advanced personalization and digital commerce growth.
Offering customers the experiences, products, and communication they want and like, digital businesses can build better customer trust and loyalty.
Personalization helps customers find exactly what they are looking for, leading them to purchase more products.
By showing personalized recommendations based on browsing habits, retailers can stand out from the crowd and turn more visitors into loyal customers.
Marketplace personalization helps win customers and encourage them to return to your store more often.
Personalization helps customers spend less time and effort on product browsing, increasing the chance of purchasing.
Companies can collect more granular customer data about shopping habits and preferences to create effective personalized campaigns.
A personalized shopping experience can become a decisive factor for many customers, driving them to buy from your online store instead of a competitor’s.
Offering continuous shopping recommendations to customers motivates them to interact with your brand more.
As an emerging must-have industry standard, shopping experience personalization significantly affects customer relationships and conversion rates. By adopting appropriate personalization tactics, B2B and B2C retailers can first understand their customers better and then provide them with the most relevant offers and experiences. Since implementing an effective ecommerce personalization strategy can seem a complicated task, involving many technological intricacies, you can turn to Itransition for assistance. Our experts can implement or develop from scratch a robust ecommerce personalization solution to optimize your marketing efforts, increase conversion rates, improve customer service, and reduce churn.
Customers have high expectations for their favorite brands, and online marketplaces have never been more important. Brands that are able to predict the desires of their online customers, and push relevant and inspirational content to them based on those desires, will see huge success in the coming years. Those who don’t will fall behind.
Modern customers expect brands to deeply understand their needs and deliver experiences tailored to them. In return, customers stay more loyal to brands providing personalized experiences.
While customization involves product modifications, such as color or size, personalization implies tailoring a customer’s digital experience to their behavior.
Several factors must be taken into consideration when implementing ecommerce personalization:
Here are key capabilities to look for in an ecommerce personalization platform:
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