Ecommerce personalization — Increase customer engagement

Want loyal customers? Want more sales? Want a website that makes shopping easy for EVERY visitor that lands on your website? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you need personalization.

What is personalization?

Personalization is the ability to suggest, offer, and provide content based on your customer’s actions. It’s giving your visitors and customers exactly what they want. You are shortening the timeframe and easing the frustrations of shopping by delivering products and content that your customers want as soon as they land on your site.

Why does personalization matter?

For one thing, it makes you stand out from the competition. Very few brands are focusing on personalization; if you can do it before your competitors do, you are going to have the upper hand.

For another thing, your customers will appreciate you more. If you provide relevant products and content to your site visitors, they are going to engage a lot more with your brand. This could be anything from buying your products to sharing your content or anything else you would want them to do.

Here are some really interesting statistics pulled from Invesp.

• 59% of online shoppers believe that it is easier to find more interesting products on a personalized online retail store.
• 56% are more likely to return to a site that recommends products.
• 53% believe that retailers who personalize the shopping experience provide a valuable service.
• 45% are more likely to shop on a site that offers personalized recommendations.

Who’s offering personalization already?

If you think you've never been fed personalization before, think again. Below are some of the biggest brands offering personalization to their users/customers. (Is it just a coincidence that these are some of the biggest companies in the world? Hmm...)

Amazon — https://www.amazon.ca/
The mother of all ecommerce sites offers personalization. With the number of products Amazon has to offer, it can be overwhelming, but with personalization, it gets much easier. The moment you land on the home page of Amazon, they analyze your past purchase and browsing history and feed you products based on what they think you might want. Most of the time they do a damn good job. The more you shop, the more data they have to personalize their offers for you.

“56% of consumers say Amazon demonstrates an understanding of their individual preferences and needs on a regular basis” - Optimizely

YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/
Video powerhouse and search engine, YouTube might not be an ecommerce website, but they do one hell of a good job of personalizing what videos they recommend and provide based on your past videos and subscription history.  

Pretty much everything you do on YouTube is personalized. When you watch a video on “how to get big biceps,” they suggest more videos on “how to get bigger biceps.”

If you watch a video on someone's channel or subscribe to a specific channel, YouTube will now display the most recent videos from that channel on the home page. You don’t even need to use the search functionality anymore; all the videos you would want to watch are fed to you the moment you land on their website. Personalization at its finest!

Netflix — https://www.netflix.com/ca/
Netflix is another great example. Much like YouTube, Netflix will constantly suggest movies that you might like based on your previous history.

This can be disrupted if you give your little sister login access. Expect non-personalized chick flick movies to be suggested the next time you log in if this happens.

Bombfell — https://www.bombfell.com/
If you like new clothes, but hate the idea of shopping, then Bombfell is what you need.

Bombfell is built on personalization. The very first thing these guys do is get you to fill out a survey so they know what type of style you like and what your budget is. If you subscribe, they send you personalized clothes based on the survey you filled out.

You get to view these clothes before they’re shipped, so you can cancel anything you don’t like. These guys are making the shopping experience very easy for the consumer.

How can I get in on this?

If you are finally convinced that you need personalization for your ecommerce business, you have a couple of options.

1. You can work with a professional agency like ourselves to get your personalization set up and on track. Contact us today!

OR

2. You can do it yourself using third-party tools and software like Optimizely.

Whichever option you choose, just remember personalization matters and it’s going to put you WAY ahead of your competition.