Online engagement has increased as people have adapted to an increase in at-home work. In 2020, retail eCommerce sales will have increased by 27.6 percent year on year, totaling $4.3 trillion. This creates opportunities for eCommerce businesses, but it also creates the challenge of standing out.
Personalizing your buyers’ journey is critical if you want to improve your customers’ experience, build a connection with them, and ultimately increase sales and retention.
Consider how traditional brick-and-mortar stores personalize things for their customers. Employees get to know their most frequent customers, give them freebies they know they’ll enjoy, keep track of the most (and least) popular products, and more. You can provide the same level of personalization in your eCommerce strategy using today’s technology and some creative thinking.
That’s what we’ll go over in this guide. We’ll go over five strategies for making your buyers’ journey one they’ll want to repeat:
Personalize your homepages
The show recently viewed items
Adapt to your surroundings
Create campaigns that are based on user behavior.
Make your emails more unique.
Make suggestions.
But first, let’s go over the fundamentals.
What is e-commerce personalization?
A successful eCommerce marketing strategy must include personalization. We’re talking about the art of providing a shopping experience tailored to individuals based on their behaviors and the information they’ve provided to you. The more personalized you are, the more they will interact with your business, and the more they interact with your business, the more information you will have to customize even more. As a result, An interactive experience with your users increases their satisfaction and leads to the desired results.
Personalization programs can result in a 20% increase in customer satisfaction and a 10-15% increase in sales conversion rates.
What to think about before tailoring your eCommerce strategy
There are a few things you should think about before implementing eCommerce personalization strategies. You’ll need:
A method of gathering information about users. This includes behavioral, demographic, and transactional information gathered via loyalty programs and cookies (but hopefully, first-party data).
A method for analyzing the collected data. From there, you can create visitor pools for specific marketing campaigns.
A method for effectively delivering an experience to each segment.
After you’ve established your targeting rules, you can use your marketing software to personalize content based on those criteria. For instance, you could send a personalized email with an offer to any customers who have been inactive for more than 60 days.
Machine learning is another option for implementation. AI technology is becoming increasingly adept at simplifying large-scale and complex processes (such as individual personalization). Human versus computer strategies does not have to be mutually exclusive. Robotic process automation (RPA), for example, employs robots that learn, mimic, and execute rules-based business processes. They interact with the application or system in the same way that a human would, except that they can work around the clock with dependability and precision.
How to Customize Your Customers’ Ecommerce Experience
Now that we’ve established what eCommerce personalization is and where to begin, let’s take a look at the various ways you can create an individualized customer journey for your users. Keep in mind that, while personalization can result in significant increases in customer satisfaction and conversions, it still necessitates resources. Consider whether personalization is a viable option for your marketing strategy. Some of the methods listed below may be easier to implement or more effective than others, depending on your industry and audience. As a result, strive to provide an impactful experience that is worth the investment.
Personalize your homepages
This type of personalization is appropriate for current users. When a customer logs into their account, you’ll be able to deliver welcome pages that highlight offers and items that are most likely to be of interest to that person.
Time-sensitive promotions or suggestions based on previous purchases can be included in the offers on their personalized homepages. These can assist in encouraging customers to move through your eCommerce sales funnel, which depicts the process an individual goes through to go from potential customer to loyal customer.
Show items that have recently been viewed
Users may return to your eCommerce site several times before adding items of interest to their shopping carts. Allowing them to see items they’ve previously clicked on gives them a gentle nudge to resume their browsing.
You can take it a step further by making offers on these recently viewed products. This can mean the difference between a customer committing to a product and abandoning it. Alternatively, if you offer free shipping, they may be more likely to add more items to their cart. Making the offer time-sensitive may also help to create a sense of urgency.
Items that have been recently viewed can be found on the homepage or on a landing page linked to a marketing email. They can, however, be found at the bottom of all pages in your eCommerce store. Customers can keep track of all the items that piqued their interest enough to click on.
Keeping track of recently viewed items necessitates the collection of customer information. Consider investing in an IaaS offering if you do not want to spend the time and money on the infrastructure required to protect, store, and use this data.
What is IaaS? It is a type of online computing infrastructure known as Infrastructure as a Service. IaaS provides computing resources via the internet and can be scaled and financed as needed. Your IaaS product manages servers, hardware, virtualization, and cloud storage.
Tailor your offerings to the location.
Consider personalizing your eCommerce feeds based on location, such as displaying items in the local currency and language, if your company has a large reach or an international market. Many enterprise eCommerce platforms are adaptable to your company’s specific requirements and can handle a higher volume of customers.
This personalization can also be done on a regional basis. For instance, if you own an online clothing store, you will have different items depending on the season. However, the winter season in California is not the same as it is in Michigan. Catering to climates and regional fashion styles can increase the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Create targeted campaigns based on user behavior.
Because your customers’ needs and interests differ, why should you offer them the same products? This type of personalization necessitates the gathering of information about how users interact with your website. Using that information, you can then use behavioral segmentation to create targeted campaigns for specific groups of your customer base.
This strategy can be used to target both existing and new customers. You could, for example, give first-time visitors a discount if they sign up for an email list or a loyalty program. You can ask an existing customer to leave a review if they have recently received items from your company.
You can offer more personalized offers based on a customer’s interests as they interact with your website over time. Consider the following when creating personalized campaigns:
What is the user clicking on?
What are the most popular pages they visit?
What do they have in their cart or on their wish list?
What product categories do they seem to be particularly interested in?
How long has it been since they last purchased something?
Make your emails more unique.
There are currently 3.9 billion daily email users in the world. This provides businesses with a fantastic opportunity to connect with their target audience, but with so many users comes fierce competition. So, how can you stand out in the inboxes of your subscribers? Personalization.
If a customer has opted in to receive marketing emails, you can use their behavioral data to send them offers and information that are tailored to their specific interests. They’ll be far more likely to follow your links. Just remember to include personalization in your subject lines as well—you want them to open the email first!
Sending these kinds of emails is advantageous for all types of eCommerce businesses. It may, however, be a good way for DTC businesses to compete in a world that now includes companies like Amazon. What exactly is DTC? It is an abbreviation for Direct to Consumer, and it is a new way for manufacturers to avoid the hassles of traditional distribution by delivering their products directly to consumers.
Make product suggestions
According to a Barilliance study, product recommendations account for 31% of eCommerce site revenues. This means that its cost-benefit potential for your company is unavoidable.
If your online store has a large number of products, a customer may lose interest before finding the item they want.
If this were a physical store, the personalized recommendation component would essentially be the employee assisting a customer in the changing room. They might not have liked that item, but how about this? Or, if you liked this item, here’s another one similar to it!
These personalized recommendations can be based on abandoned carts or pages visited by the user. The more information you have on that user, the better recommendations you can make for them.
Begin personalizing your customers’ eCommerce buyer journeys right now
A successful eCommerce marketing strategy must include personalization. You want your customers to have the same experience they would have in a physical store, but from the comfort of their own home.
Discuss the best ways to personalize your eCommerce site and offerings with your team. Even if your team is working from home, consider using available video conferencing software or VoIP solutions.
When your team and customers feel engaged with one another through communication and personalization, you will not only have higher employee and customer satisfaction but also higher returns. Now, go out there and begin personalizing your customers’ journeys.
