Personalization is a powerful tool that can help businesses stand out in a competitive market. By tailoring the shopping experience of online shoppers to their specific needs and preferences, businesses can make customers feel understood and appreciated. This can lead to a positive feedback loop of increased customer loyalty and conversions.
Why is a personalised online shopping experience important?
The days of generic marketing campaigns are over. Customers today have access to a wide variety of retailers, web shops, and products. In addition, search engines make it easier than ever for potential customers to find what they’re looking for. With so many options available, it’s a challenge for e-commerce businesses to stand out and build long-term relationships with customers.
Personalization is the answer. By understanding the preferences, needs, and buying patterns of their customers, businesses can build relationships of trust. By creating a personalized shopping experience based on their customers’ personal data, businesses can make customers feel more engaged with their brand and products. And when businesses meet their customers’ needs, the chances of those customers becoming loyal customers increase significantly.
How to get started with personalisation
The easiest way to start personalizing is to implement a Customer Data Platform (CDP) into your business strategy. A CDP uses smart algorithms to collect and unify large amounts of personal customer data. It also provides simple ways to personalize different touchpoints and interactions.
The implementation of a CDP like Spotler Activate opens up a world of possibilities for personalization. Most of the following ways to personalize the online shopping experience are only possible with a CDP. Let’s look at five ways to provide a personalized online shopping experience:
1. Personalized product recommendations
By using data from customer browsing and purchase history, product recommendations can be an effective tactic in your personalization strategy. This is a well-known and widely used tactic that can be used on both your website and in email campaigns.
The most common types of personalized product recommendations are:
- Most relevant products
- Similar products
- Top 10 most popular products
- Cross-sell and upsell recommendations
The effectiveness of product recommendations is based on high-quality customer data and customer profiles. The more data you have, the more effective your product recommendations can be. Some types of customer data you should consider include:
- Recently viewed items
- Purchase history
- Browse history
- Demographic data
- Search history
- Social media data
- Behavioural data
- Weather data
As mentioned earlier, implementing a CDP into your marketing strategy can significantly simplify the process of data collection and generating 360-degree profiles.
2. Customizable products
Another way to personalize is to let your customers be creative. By offering customization options on the products you offer, customers can express their own identity. An example is offering the ability to customize colours, text, and elements of the product.
One of the most well-known examples of this form of product personalization is Nike’s custom shoe design tool. This gives customers the feeling that they have the opportunity to show who they really are, which has a significant positive impact on customer loyalty.
3. Virtual try-on
Virtual try-on is a technology that allows customers to see how a product would look on them through virtual reality. It is a growingly popular way for retailers to offer personalization online, as it allows customers to shop from the comfort of their own homes. This saves time and money for both customers and e-commerce retailers.
One way to integrate virtual try-on into your online personalization strategy is to recommend products based on customer preferences and previous purchases that are likely to fit the body type of your customer. For additional engagement, you can add a sharing feature so that your customer can show off their virtual try-on to friends and family.
Glasses manufacturer Charlie Temple built its entire e-commerce strategy around this specific form of personalization. With success! Other companies such as Zara, L’Oréal, and Warby Parker have also integrated virtual try-ons into their e-commerce strategies.
4. Personalized offers
If you have implemented a CDP into your strategy, your website visitors are already segmented into specific profiles. Some visitors are price-sensitive and are categorized as economical customer types. Others are authority sensitive. With this valuable information, you can easily offer personalized promotions to each specific customer.
By giving a price-sensitive customer a 10% discount on their recently viewed item, you can just tip them over the edge when making a purchase. While customers who are sensitive to authority may be more likely to be persuaded by offering a white paper that demonstrates your knowledge on a particular subject. Even your customers’ preferred way of being contacted can be integrated into this tactic.
5. Custom search results
Another effective way to personalize the online shopping experience is to implement custom search results. This tactic involves using algorithms to tailor search results to the individual preferences and past behaviour of your customer. This can help your customers find the products they are looking for faster. This can improve sales and customer loyalty.
E-commerce giant Amazon uses this tactic to recommend products based on customer browsing and purchase history. If a customer has searched for a specific book, the algorithm will prioritize similar products and display them in their next search results. Netflix and Spotify have implemented this functionality to recommend TV shows and music that are likely to meet the customer’s preferences.
How to get started with personalisation
In addition to the 5 forms of personalization that we described in this blog, there are many more effective ways that can improve your personalization strategy, which ultimately contributes to increasing your conversion rate and revenue. Almost all options require an effective way of data collection and high-quality (360-degree) customer profiles to be able to create a personalized experience for each individual.
Therefore, we recommend that you make sure that this basis is in order before you proceed with your personalization strategy. The best way to get the basis in order is to integrate a Customer Data Platform (CDP) into your business strategy. It automatically collects, unifies, and analyzes your customer data. So you don’t have to do it anymore. In addition, it allows you to set up effective personalized marketing campaigns within minutes, without the need for programming knowledge.
Spotler Activate’s CDP simplifies personalization so that you can focus on strategy and creating creative campaigns instead of having to manage customer data at the micro level.
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