Ecommerce personalization is rapidly becoming one of the most valuable tools for companies looking to increase sales and ROI online. After all, shopping experiences always feel better when they’re catered specifically to your needs.Today’s consumers, with a host of potential vendors to choose from, are naturally drawn to the companies capable of offering a memorable, relevant customer experience. 91% of customers say they’re more likely to buy from companies who remember their browsing/purchase history and deliver “relevant offers.” A further 83% of those customers are also willing to assist in your personalization efforts, by providing data for your ecommerce store.Simply put, ecommerce personalization improves the shopping experience, keeps your customer coming back, and generates brand loyalty. So how do you personalize your ecommerce store for each visitor? You can simplify the entire experience by contacting Ampry, and read on for more tips.
Why Does Personalization Matter in Ecommerce?
Implementing customer data into a personalization strategy isn’t always easy. First, ensure you’re collecting information carefully throughout the customer journey, so you can connect with your audience without risking compliance issues. But it’s worth the effort. Personalization is essential to delivering a powerful customer experience. Today, every website visitor wants to feel like you understand their specific needs and expectations, especially potential and repeat customers. A personalized experience is how you ensure customers are more likely to not only buy from your ecommerce store, but advocate for your brand, and become repeat clients.Personalization programs can yield 10-15% increases in sales conversions, and 20% higher customer satisfaction rates on average. A personalized experience can also support the rest of your digital marketing strategy.
What does SEO have to do with personalization?
When you give your customers a personalized shopping experience, you can also boost your chances of a better SEO ranking, and increased long term traffic.Personalization is a proven tactic to keep each visitor on your site for longer, reduce bounce rates, and strengthen your website’s appearance on search engines. The longer visitors stick around and interact with your site, the more Google sees your site as being the perfect solution to these customers’ problems.
How Can I Personalize my Store for Each Visitor?
There are multiple methods of ecommerce personalization store owners can consider, depending on the goals they’re trying to achieve. Here are some great ideas to get you started.
- Start with Homepage Personalization
When you’re just getting started with ecommerce personalization, it’s a good idea to focus on the first introduction your customer is going to have to your online store. Homepages are essentially the storefront for your entire ecommerce business. Once you have your audience’s attention, and you’ve convinced them to click into your website, you want to capture customer engagement straight away. Personalization is an excellent way to do this. Start by making sure you ask for permission to collect cookies to improve customer experience. Then, highlight how collecting this information will help you to make better product recommendations and enhance the shopping experience in future. As your customer browses your store, keep track of where they go and what they do, then use your cookies to alter the homepage experience next time your customer visits. For instance, just look at how Amazon customizes the home page for every visitor by collecting information about their shopping and content consumption habits:
2. Deliver Personalized Guides
Though online shopping and ecommerce have a lot of convenience to offer, they lose out on the personalized experience of having a shopping assistant when you’re searching for the right product. Fortunately, new technologies make it possible to reintroduce this experience back into the digital world.Sites like Topshop use quizzes and surveys to determine what kinds of products shoppers are most likely to be drawn to with a few basic questions. By asking your customers about their preferences, you can make sure you’re letting them know about the products they’re most interested in from the moment they log onto your site. You could even allow customers to create their own wish list on your app, where you can gather more insights into the kind of products they like.Personalized guides enhance the customer experience with correct product recommendations, and they also teach you about shoppers.
3. Keep Track of Recently Viewed Items
Not every visitor to your ecommerce store will automatically become a customer the first time they browse through your product pages. However, that doesn’t mean they’ll want to start searching for the perfect product from scratch if they return to your site later.Keeping track of the recently viewed items your customers checked out previously will ensure they can pick up where they left off when looking for product recommendations. You can even draw attention to recently viewed items when sending follow-up emails to your customers, to remind them of the products that have already caught their eye. Amazon, ASOS, and countless other stores use this strategy to simplify the shopping experience for every customer.Based on your customer’s recently viewed items, you can also provide a recommendation or two for connected or relevant products they may be interested in.
4. Use Location to Personalize the Experience
As any ecommerce expert will know, creating customer loyalty and boosting sales means segmenting your customers based on a range of factors. When you’re trying to enhance your ecommerce website, providing a product recommendation or two based on location can be an excellent strategy. Customizing pages based on location can help you enhance the shopping experience in various ways. For instance, if you sell products in different countries, you can use product page personalization to show pricing in your customer’s currency. You can also provide the most relevant sizes, information, etc., to customers in different locations.For instance, Allbirds shows different shoe sizes and pricing information based on where you visit their product pages from.A good personalization platform should allow you to make basic dynamic changes to product pages like this. You can also take the strategy a step further and change the product recommendation features on your home page based on what’s in stock for customers in different parts of the world.
5. Design campaigns based on User Behavior
There are multiple ways to differentiate and segment your ecommerce shoppers. Each customer has different needs and preferences, as well as various strategies for buying. Designing different sales journeys for your customers based on their behavior is an excellent way to boost your chances of success. For instance, you might start by offering a brand-new visitor a discount on your website to convince them to make an initial purchase.For a returning customer, you might change this code to something different, like free shipping, or a discount on their favorite products. You could even draw attention to a specific product your customer was looking at when they were last on your website, or offer a bundle or discount specifically for them, if you’re worried about cart abandonment.
6. Get Personal with Emails
Email marketing is one of the best ways to double down on the personalization experience for your shoppers. Though email might not be the newest tool for marketing, it is one of the most effective, generating around $42 for every $1 you spend.Most ecommerce store builders will allow you to integrate your email marketing tools into the mix, so you can send customer data from your store into your email campaigns. With the right information, you can quickly enhance messages by:
- Personalizing email subject lines: Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be clicked.
- Celebrating special occasions: Highlight company milestones, birthdays, and anniversaries to remind your customers you value them.
- Tracking user behavior: Remind customers they’ve left items in their basket, or let them know it’s about time to replenish their supplies of a specific product. Spotify regularly maintains customer engagement with personalized messages and offers based on their user activity.
7. Make Personal Recommendations
One of the most important tools in any ecommerce personalization strategy, is recommendations. The more you can guide your customer towards the perfect products and services, the better. In fact, studies show personalized product recommendation makes up about 31% of ecommerce revenue.There are various great ways to suggest similar, complementary, or upgraded versions of items on product pages to help guide the purchasing experience.Even if you don’t have any prior knowledge about your customers, you can guide them to best-sellers and new-arrivals using tools like Ampry. Once your customer has added products to their cart, you’ll also have endless ways to increase their average order value with abandoned cart strategies. For instance, you can offer discounts when customers buy two products together, or let them know they’ll get free shipping when their order reaches a certain value.
Mastering Ecommerce Personalization
Demand for website personalization is here to stay. Every customer visiting your ecommerce store wants their shopping experience to be relevant to their needs, complete with product recommendations chosen just for them.A comprehensive approach to personalization, focusing on recommendations, personalized email marketing, and unique offers, should keep your shoppers coming back for more.Learn how to personalize the shopping experience and achieve higher conversions by arranging your strategy call with Ampry today.