Once upon a time, customers simply walked into stores and met a friendly shopkeeper who helped them out. No one hears you walking the halls of those buildings… not anymore. The world shifted to online shopping.
Unprecedented growth occurred in the eCommerce sector amid the COVID-19 crisis. And Amazon has spoiled us to the point that we expect extreme personalization. If we dont get it, we just go elsewhere.
If you don’t have a personalization strategy, you are losing 75% of shoppers who leave your website because they get frustrated by irrelevant offers. Website personalization helps to make the purchasing process faster, get better deals, and curb information overload. Before we dive in, lets make sure were all on the same page.
What is personalization?
Personalization is the process of creating customized, pleasing experiences for visitors. Every customer sees a slightly different version of your website which is defined by the particular audience segment the shopper falls into. These segments are based on:
- Past purchase history and average order value
- Demographics (age, ethnicity, location, income level)
- Psychographics (interests, habits, emotions, attitudes)
- Visitor type (new visitors or returning visitors)
- Traffic source (referral sites, social media, direct or from paid link ads)
- Site engagement (browsing time or number of pages viewed)
- Current cart profile
- And so much more
When a store suggests products that supplement the items in your cart, thats personalization. It allows you to create unique shopping experiences tailored to each particular user.
7 brilliant eCommerce personalization examples to boost sales
Ever hopped on a website and thought: Thats exactly what I was looking for! Theres a good chance that the retailer knew who you were, why you were visiting, and what you were seeking. Lets take a look at eCommerce personalization done well.
- Amazon uses personalization every step of the way
Amazon goes above and beyond to understand customers buying habits. By taking a page from Amazon’s book, brands can leverage winning strategies for their personalization efforts.
Amazon uses deep learning to determine which products a customer is likely to purchase next. The items customers have bought, viewed, and reviewed are taken into account. Amazon weaves seasons and holidays into its recommendation algorithms. It indulges with clients on a personal level every time they land on the site, theyre greeted with a homepage that seems to be specially designed for them.
- Everything Netflix does is driven by smart AI algorithms
80% of what people watch on Netflix comes from their personalized recommendation algorithms. Machine learning algorithms process multiple data points and recommend shows/movies that match users tastes.
The platform strives to display the right content at the right time. It uses time as a strong variable to recommend shows. For instance, Netflix suggests shorter shows when users log in late at night.
- Spotifys Discover Weekly playlists
Discover Weekly helps to find new music based on a persons taste. Spotify collects data about the songs people listen to and creates unique playlists. This playlist combines personal listening data with data from users that have similar listening tastes. If Spotify notices that two of your favorite songs tend to appear on playlists along with a third song you havent heard yet, it will suggest that song to you.
The algorithm ignores temporary spikes in listening activity since many people share their logins. All new listening activities do not lead to immediate changes in your playlist.
- Chubbies uses comedy to build a base of die-hard customers
Fast-growing retailer Chubbies combine retargeting ads with a boosted video. But instead of using video to highlight their products, the brand entertains their shoppers. Chubbies dont create content just to get a sale they want to get a laugh out of their customers.
Chubbies videos are designed for the brands target customer. The brand takes into consideration what kind of videos their shoppers would find funny, and what would be timely. The company gathers behavioral data to discover trends and share videos that are more likely to resonate with their customer base.
- Levis chatbot assistance
One of the drawbacks of online shopping is being unable to speak to an assistant. Levis navigate this problem with its chatbot, Ask Indigo. It suggests clothing items based on the users preferences.
By speaking to customers directly, even through a voice chat, the brand enhances interaction and offers customers relevant products.
- ASOS changes the whole website navigation based on past user engagement
ASOS employs dynamic interfaces, which change depending on what pages users have visited before. For example, if a customer viewed items in the womens clothing part of the site, then the next time the womens section would be automatically presented, without having to click through.
- EasyJet got emotional with personalization
For its 20th anniversary, EasyJet released a personalized ad campaign that was built around data on each customers journey throughout the years. Emails contained images and links that showcased each customers story from their first-ever EasyJet flight to their flights to come.
EasyJet transformed customer data into emotional anniversary stories to creatively display customers individual travel history over the last 20 years. To make it truly personal, the company created a model that profiled all of the destinations customers had been to and suggested similar ones based on easyJets destination profiles, and also where other users with similar travel patterns had been. The extract that powered this campaign contained over 1,000 lines of code, resulting in 12 million-plus emails that were completely unique. The result? EasyJet saw open rates over 100% higher than that of their average newsletter. And 7.5 percent of customers made a booking in the next 30 days.
Critical success factors of a personalized customer journey
Its so much more than just product recommendations or using someones {firstname}. When it comes to selecting an eCommerce personalization strategy, here are 3 crucial abilities:
- In-depth behavior tracking
The ability to respond in real-time to actions customers have taken is vital for a successful personalization strategy.
- Dynamic content generation
Your eCommerce personalization tool should also enable you to generate dynamic content. By offering relevant content, you enhance the shopping journey of your customers.
- Powerful analytics & segmentation
It should be able to segment and group your visitors based on their web behaviors and target them with relevant information.
To wrap up
How effective is eCommerce personalization? The study by Segment revealed some truly impressive numbers:
- 49% of shoppers purchased a product they didnt originally intend to buy after receiving a personalized recommendation.
- 44% of consumers said they would likely become repeat customers if their experience was personalized.
- 40% of customers purchased something more expensive because their recommendations were personalized.
Personalization allows you to create an exceptional shopping experience tailored to each customer. It enables you to offer more relevant product information, leading to increased conversion rate, improved average order value, time savings in your sales department, and boosted ROI. No matter what industry youre in, personalization seems to be the way to your customers heart.
