‘Personalization’ and ‘customer journey’ are two of the most popular buzzwords in e-commerce. Every online marketing director will tell you how they’re constantly testing and adjusting to increase conversions or improve AOV, but 64% of customers feel that merchants don’t really understand them.
Personalizing your buyers’ journey is critical if you want to improve the experience of your consumers, develop a relationship with them, and increase sales and retention.
Consider how traditional brick-and-mortar companies customize things for their clients. Employees learn about their most frequent customers, offer them freebies they know they enjoy, keep track of the most (and least) popular items, and more. You may now give the same personalized service with today’s technology and some creative imagination.
Considerations for customizing your e-commerce strategy
There are a few things to think about before you start applying e-commerce personalization techniques. You’ll need:
- A mechanism for obtaining information on consumers. This covers behavioral, demographic, and transactional data you gather through loyalty programs and cookies (but hopefully, first-party data).
- An analysis of the data. You may then aggregate pools of visitors for certain marketing efforts from there.
- This entails creating a method to provide each group with an experience that is relevant and fulfilling.
How to tailor your customers’ e-commerce experience
1. Make personalized homepages
This sort of individualization is perfect for existing customers. You’ll be able to provide welcome pages that advertise special offers and goods that are most likely of interest to the customer if they are logged in to their account.
On their individual websites, merchants may provide items like time-limited sales or recommendations based on prior purchases. These might help encourage customers to go through your e-commerce sales funnel, which depicts the journey from a potential client to a loyal customer.
2. Make recently viewed items appear
Users may look through your e-commerce website numerous times before adding anything to their carts. Allowing them to view items that they’ve previously selected provides them with the nudge they need to continue browsing.
You may also use these recently viewed products to build offers. This might determine whether or not a consumer commits to a product or leaves it behind. It’s possible that making the offer free of charge will encourage them to include more items in their shopping basket. Making the offer time-sensitive may also help create a sense of urgency.
On the homepage or a landing page linked to form a marketing email, recently viewed goods may be discovered. They can also be found at the bottom of each page in your e-commerce business, however. This lets consumers keep track of all the products they were intrigued by enough to click on.
3. Make location-specific offerings
Consider customizing your e-commerce feeds based on location, such as displaying products in the native currency and language. Many business-grade e-commerce platforms are adaptable to your company’s specific demands and can manage a larger number of consumers.
You may also customize the name to reflect the local interests of your customers. For example, if you own an online clothing store, you might have different items available depending on the season. However, in California, winter differs from that in Michigan. By catering to climate and regional fashion preferences, you can improve the efficacy of your campaigns considerably.
4. Tailor special campaigns based on how the user behaves
Customers’ needs and interests vary, so why offer them the same items? This level of customization necessitates the gathering of information about how customers use your website. You can then apply behavioral segmentation to target certain groups in your client base based on their interactions with your website.
You may utilize this technique to reach out to both existing and potential consumers. For example, you may give newcomers a discount or freebie if they sign up for your email list or loyalty program for the first time. If you get items from us, we’d appreciate it if you could leave a review.
It is critical to any company’s success to have positive evaluations. If a product has just five reviews, it has a 270% better chance of being bought.
You may create more personalized offers for your customers based on their interests as they browse your website over a period of time. When creating tailored campaigns, keep the following factors in mind:
- What are the things receiving the users’ clicks?
- Pages that the user frequently visits.
- Keep a track of the user’s cart and wishlist.
- Which category of products is getting their attention the most?
- When was the last time they made a purchase?
5. Email personalization
There are currently 3.9 billion daily email users in the world. That provides businesses a fantastic chance to connect with their customers, but there is a lot of competition due to a large number of users. So, how can you make yourself noticeable among your subscribers’ inboxes? Personalization is the answer.
Using behavioral data from customers who have opted in for marketing emails, you may send them offers and information tailored to their preferences. They’ll be far more likely to click on your links. Just remember to personalize your subject lines as well—you’ve got to get them to open the email first!
Sending emails of this sort may be useful for a wide range of e-commerce enterprises. DTC, on the other hand, might help DTC businesses compete in a world where Amazon and other competitors have emerged. What is DTC? It’s an abbreviation for Direct to Consumer, which is a new distribution method used by manufacturers that bypasses the hassles of traditional distribution.
6. Recommend Products
According to research by Barilliance, 31% of e-commerce site income is derived from product recommendations. This implies that its cost-benefit potential for your company is impossible to ignore.
If your online store has a large number of items, a consumer may lose interest before finding the one they like. Your customers will find personalized suggestions on your website as a guide.
It’s the salesperson who recommends something different. This is a huge portion of their job at any physical store: to assist customers in finding exactly what they want and purchasing it. They may not have liked that item, but what about this? Or, if you loved this product, here’s one that’s identical!
You may create personalized recommendations based on past abandoned carts or on pages where the user has been. The more information you have about that individual, the better your suggestions will be.
Conclusion
Personalization is an important element of an effective e-commerce marketing plan. You want buyers to have the same experience they would get in a physical store, without having to leave their home.
Have a conversation with your staff about how to make your e-commerce site and services more personalized. You’ll not only have greater employee and consumer satisfaction if your team and consumers are engaged with each other through communication and customization, but you’ll also see better financial results. Now go out there and start customizing the journeys of your customers.
If you wish to customize the journey of your customers, start your free trial with Wigzo today!
