You know that feeling you get when a waiter at a restaurant remembers your name? This is the feeling of being valued and being an important person. This is the same feeling all customers want, even on e-commerce platforms.
Customer personalization in e-commerce is the key. It has been a trend in the e-commerce industry for the past 10 years and is bound to be an eternal trend.
According to The State of Personalization Report by Segment, 49% of customers will likely become repeat buyers after receiving a personalized shopping experience. Furthermore, 80% of business leaders state that customers buy more if they receive a personalized experience (34% more).
What Is the Effect of E-commerce Personalization?
Some of the long-term benefits businesses that have cracked e-commerce personalization enjoy include:
Customer Loyalty
Customer personalization in commerce effectively creates a trusting relationship with the audience. Customers receiving personalized services and products know that the brand understands their needs. Thus, they are likely to choose the specific brand repeatedly — this is how to build brand loyalty.
Sales Conversions
e-commerce personalization is an eternal trend because it translates to revenue. Customer personalization shows customers their exact interests. This is based on what they have been searching for or what they have been curious about. McKinsey in a recent report stated that companies that have successfully implemented customer personalization generate 40% more revenue than those just getting the hang of it.
Brand Engagement
e-commerce personalization offers customers content and products relevant to them. This relevancy is based on their preferences and purchase history. With relatable content and products, customers will spend more time on the platform. They will browse and engage with different products, content, and pages. Add comment sections, surveys, feedback gathering, and so on — and you will get brand engagement your competitors will envy.
Customer Personalization Elements
Using customers’ data is key to successfully executing customer personalization. The goal is to curate the experience that the customer wants on the platform for a great user experience. Below are the elements to pay attention to for successful customer personalization in e-commerce.
Localized Content
Customers interacting on e-commerce platforms expect content to be tailored to them. To achieve this, you need to collect these data types:
Demographic data
It refers to personal data about the customers, including name, location, email, gender, age, etc.
This data can be used to show content in relevant languages and currencies based on the customer’s location or display visuals and products based on the customer’s age group.
Behavioral Data
This refers to an analysis of customers’ activities on a platform, including the traffic source, visited pages, clicked links, average time spent on the platform, the number of visits made, etc.
This data can be used in curating unique offers, displaying related products, and personalized marketing campaigns.
Contextual Data
Contextual data refers to customers’ unique properties related to their behavioral data while on the platform. Examples of such data are device type and browser type used to access the site, current location and time when accessing the platform, etc.
This information can be used for personalized messaging and ads to improve engagement.
Dynamic Content and Pricing
The pricing of certain products can be tailor-made for customers based on their shopping profiles. A shopping profile combines a customer’s sale history, browsing history, and demographic data.
Dynamic pricing is mainly achieved by offering customers personal discounts on products most relevant to them to encourage a sale. Another use case for tailored pricing is offering discounts on the one or two products left in the cart. This will encourage the customer to return to buy the left product — Twinslash or other custom website developers can come in handy in helping you implement this feature.
User-Generated Content
A positive review from a customer about a product or brand is as good as a personal recommendation. Buyers will trust a brand more if they see positive feedback from other buyers of products they want. Using customer content such as photos, videos, and reviews in listings is essential in e-commerce.
Recommended Items
One of the ways to make soft sales is through intelligent recommendations of products to customers, which can be made based on customer data. It can be the search/purchase history or related products. Some of the most efficient product recommendation forms used include:
- Frequently bought together items
- Previously viewed items
- You might also like items
- Bestseller items
- New arrivals items
E-commerce giants like Amazon have reported that the above forms account for about 35% of their sales.
“Return to Cart” Button
An abandoned cart is as good as a lost sale. One way to reduce abandoned carts is by periodically sending automated and personalized emails or instant messages to customers to remind them of the uncompleted buy. Personalization of this communication can include the use of the first name. Information about the last viewed products can also be included.
Providing a “Return to Cart ” button with every interaction is important to make recovering lost customers more effective. It helps customers to return to a store with just one click and complete purchases after prompting.
Overlays
An overlay is a graphical content box that displays itself in the middle of a page to obscure the rest of the content on the page.
Overlays invite customers to share contact information in exchange for benefits, such as offers, discounts, coupons, or free trials. Overlays will also help you engage customers at different points to create a fulfilling experience and close a sale.
When correctly applied, overlays increase conversions and sales. Visitors are converted to customers, and customers are encouraged to complete purchases. However, overlays can be irritating if not displayed at the most suitable time, which may lead to a loss of customers. Thus, the triggers for displaying overlays must be well-thought-out.
Some of the most advantageous times to display an overlay include:
- Greeting / Welcoming first-time visitors
An overlay requesting email information in exchange for a unique first-time buyer discount, or access to a free website tour.
- Customers stuck on a specific page indicating possible difficulty
Idling on a landing page or excess time spent at checkout can trigger a prompt offering help via live chat or a form to share contact details for further help.
- Customers/ Visitors about to leave the site
Monitoring exit-intent triggers, such as moving a mouse to the browser toolbar, can trigger an offer or discount overlay to engage the customer to continue shopping on the platform.
Pop-ups
Pop-ups are effective in grabbing the attention of users on e-commerce platforms and focusing on specific content, successfully leading to conversions. However, as with overlays, timing is key. When done incorrectly, pop-ups can be intrusive to users causing negative experiences.
For instance, when designing the trigger mechanics of pop-ups, it is important to track specific customer behaviors to inform you when to display pop-ups. Some of them are:
- After X duration of a visitor’s session on the site.
- When the total value of products added to the cart is above or below Y amount.
- When customers get to page X that aligns with their previous browsing behavior.
Make the Customer Feel Special
Customer personalization aims at making the customer feel special. Happy customers return to make more purchases and drive sales. So, getting customer personalization right is key to the success of any e-commerce platform. Better yet, you can invest in skilled custom website and software development providers to guarantee the successful implementation of customer personalization features into your e-commerce platform.
