eCommerce personalization is the practice of tailoring the shopping experience for each and every customer you have. These days, it’s much easier to this than you may realize. Here are some tips from the experts, that will help you improve conversions and customer loyalty, too.
Why Use Personalization?
Before you get started, it’s important you understand why personalization is so important to your online store. There are three main reasons why you’ll want to offer a personal experience to shoppers:
Create loyal shoppers: When the shopping experience is personalised to them, shoppers find it much more pleasant buying from you. Because of this, they’re much more likely to come back and buy from you again.
Drive sales: As initial customers come and buy from you, you’ll see that more visitors will start coming by and buying from you. This is driven by word of mouth and sharing online.
Driving more conversions: Once you’ve driven those initial conversions, you’ll see there’s a snowball effect. You’ll get more people following you on social media, signing up to your email lists, and of course, buying things from your store.
How To Use Personalization On Your Online Store
Now, you need to know how you can personalize your online store and start seeing the benefits. Here are some tried and tested methods that companies have used, and seen results from.
Offer Live Chat
In a bricks and mortar store, there are ways that you can help the customer then and there. They can ask questions about an item and make a decision to buy it right away. In eCommerce, it’s not as simple as that. In the past if a customer really wanted an answer, they’d have to email you. In that time, they may decide that they’ll buy the item elsewhere, or not at all.
You can avoid that by offering live chat to your customers. You’ve probably used this yourself elsewhere. If you have a question, you can click a link on the site and start talking to a rep directly. This helps convert leads, as they are more likely to buy if you can offer help right away.
“Even if you can’t offer help as there are no reps available, you can still offer a list of pre defined options, that will help customers get what they’re looking for. With this, you’re personalizing the experience for them and making it much more likely that they’ll buy,” says Sarah Hill, a writer at Top Writing Service.
Use User Generated Content
User Generated Content is content that your customers create about your product. That can be things like YouTube videos, social media posts, and more. You can use that to your advantage. More than half of most customers are more likely to buy something if another customer recommends it. You can show them this content, which shows that the product comes highly recommended, and help drive that sale.
For example, take the SeaVees label. They use the official SeaVees hashtag to curate content from Instagram, and showcase pictures on their home page. It’s a simple strategy, but one that shows they’re a trusted brand.
Create Campaigns Based On User Behavior
Not all your customers are the same. You know that, and that’s why you segment your audience when creating marketing campaigns. You can take this one step further, creating campaigns that will speak to the audience depending on how they use your site.
Before you do this, you need to be sure you’re properly analysing your users’ behavior. All good eCommerce retailers use analytics to show who’s using their site and how, so they can properly market to their audience.
Once you have that information, you can set up offers that are made available to customers once they display a certain behavior. For example, if a customer has spent some time on a product page and is about to leave, you can send them a money off offer if they complete the order. That makes them more likely to buy, as they’ll be getting a deal.
Celebrate Customer Milestones
Customers want to feel as though they’re appreciated for being a loyal customer of yours. If you can make them feel appreciated, they’re always ready to buy more through your store.
There are lots of ways you can do this. For example, when you have customers signed up as members on your site, you’ll have basic data such as their address and birthday. You can then send them emails on their birthdays, and send them a voucher or offer to use on your store.
It’s a very simple offer to set up, but it’s one that you can use to your advantage.
Remind Customers Of Previous Purchases
It’s important to understand that your customers are often browsing across several sites when they’re looking for something. As they’re dealing with so much information overload, of course they may forget what they were doing, or what site they were using.
You can use personalization to remind them of this, and help them complete their purchase. A lot of sites are using this to remind customers of what they were looking at. You can implement this quite easily, too. For example, adding a tab that displays what the customer was previously looking at can be enough to convince them to go through with the purchase.
There’s also the option to use a pop up. This comes up when the customer comes back to the site, and asks them to pick up where they left off. Either of these strategies will go a long way towards increasing conversions.
Take Personalization One Step Further
There are many that think personalization stops at just using the customer’s name when they log in, or when you send them an email. That’s standard now across most sites, so you need to be offering something different to get what you’re looking for here.
You can take inspiration from the Very.co.uk site. This actually uses weather data from where the customer is located to personalize the site for them. When the log in, they’ll get a message that changes dependent on the weather.
If it’s bright and sunny where they are, then they’ll get a message and recommendations for lighter and more colorful outfits. If it’s rainy out, then they get a message to bundle up, and recommendations for warmer clothing.
It’s such a simple option and easy to set up, but it packs a real punch for personalization.
Help Customers Navigate Your Site
As you grow as a site, the site will get bigger. That’s to be expected, as you’ll have more to offer. However, that will make the site harder to navigate overall. You can make the process easier by personalizing it for each shopper.
There are a few ways you can do this. For example, ASOS will direct you to the section you were looking at last, so you can find what you were looking for. On other sites, they take it one step further by using a small questionnaire to understand what you need, and then direct you to the right page.
There are so many ways personalization will help drive sales on your site. Use these tried and tested strategies to improve conversion and buyer loyalty for your brand.
Emily Henry is a business writer.
