E-Commerce Personalization Strategies

Online shoppers enjoy customized treatment just as you love a personalized experience at your favorite store. This is often referred to as an exclusive shopping experience in real life.

For the online shopping experience, we call this eCommerce personalization. Online shoppers want a touch of personalization, especially if they have been shopping with you for a while. They expect you to know what they like, what suits them the most, and the items they’ve wished to get.

According to Accenture, 9 out of every ten customers would shop with companies that offer personalized offers. Eight out of every ten customers are also willing to share personal data if that would create a customized experience.

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. You don’t expect your tailor to take fittings every time you walk into the store. You hope your makeup artists remember the colors that blend well with your skin.

You also expect your eCommerce store to remember your preferences and offer you a shopping experience that makes you feel special. It is a no-brainer: if you make customers feel special, they are more likely to become loyal customers. Everybody wins.

This article will explain what eCommerce personalization is, show you the best strategies, and give tips on applying them to improve your conversions.

Let’s dive right in.

What is eCommerce Personalization?

Ecommerce personalization is when you tailor your eCommerce shopping experience to the unique taste and behaviors of your shoppers.

Rather than create a generic feel, you create a unique environment for each visit based on their purchase history, browsing behavior, and demographics.

The goal of eCommerce personalization is to create a unique shopping experience and create offers that appeal to the needs and tastes of your customer. The result is increased customer loyalty and better conversions.

The Best Four Ecommerce Personalization Strategies

Here are the best-proven eCommerce personalization example strategies to help you increase customer retention and boost conversions.

For these strategies, you need third-party marketing tools. Not to worry, we will recommend the best software for each strategy.

1. Personalized Homepages

First impressions are everything; and nothing makes a good or bad first impression like your homepage.

So, the first place to create that personalized experience is by creating customized homepages.

Thankfully, with cookies, you can know precisely how to tailor your homepage to your visitors’ needs even after one visit.

Most websites, by default, collect cookies. if you don’t yet, you should start doing so now. Cookies allow you to get information about your visitors, such as their interests and preferences.

You can use this information to improve your visitors’ shopping experience on the next visit.

For instance, if a visitor spends much time within a particular category, you can set the landing page for that category as their homepage. Your website leads them to the section they like checking out on their next visit.

Another way to personalize your homepage is to tailor your website content to the customer’s location. So, if a visitor chooses Europe as their location on their first visit, you can use cookies to remember this information. You then direct them to the Europe store every time they visit.

Lastly, you can also use this information to make relevant offers. Generally speaking, if a visitor constantly spends time shopping in the wristwatch category, you can recommend wristwatches similar to the ones they were checking out.

Recommended tool: Instapage. If you are just building your eCommerce website, check out Instapage to help you with landing pages and personalization. It is a simple and affordable solution.

2. Personalized Guides

If there is one thing high-end retail stores do right, it is to offer personal shopping assistants. Customers love it when a store gives them a personalized shopping experience.

In real life, that would break the bank for most retail stores. But online? Every store can create personalized guides in eCommerce to give customers a personalized touch.

The simplest way to do this is to offer first-time visitors a short, fun quiz. The basic quiz should include questions on

• Size
• Taste
• Style choice
• Budget
• Gender

Of course, you want to keep the guide as short, simple, and unintrusive as possible.

You can then create a size and style guide based on their answers. These guides are great at helping visitors quickly find what they need and make buying decisions. It can also accelerate the purchasing process.

You can also use the information to create personalized recommendations for each visit. For example, create a customized wardrobe or shelf for your visitor filled with matching pairs of clothes, accessories, and other items.

Every once in a while, add new products to the wardrobe and inform your shoppers via email.

Recommended tool: Collect.Chat. When it comes to collecting information from your website visitors, Collect.Chat is our top recommendation. Check out this guide for other third-party tools to create a personalized shopping experience.

3. Special Campaigns Based on User Behavior

There are different stages in the buyer’s journey. One shopper could be landing on your site for the first time while the other is coming to recheck the prices of items they saw the last time.

Instead of offering them the same thing, you can provide personalized, on-site messages.

You want to offer first-time visitors an incentive in exchange for your email addresses. That can be a discount, a free item, or free delivery. You can also promise highly personalized shopping recommendations and updates on sales promos.

After their first visit, you don’t want to show them another signup form. Instead, you should introduce your popular products or current promotions. Track the items they spend time looking at and recommend similar things.

Another behavior-based campaign is exit-intent. This move helps you to capture visitors when they want to click out of your site and offers them an incentive to take action.

That can be to join your email list or complete a purchase. You can also throw in an incentive to make this compelling.

Another option is to display a recommendation if a visitor spends time looking at a category page. For instance, if they are browsing through a perfume catalog, you can display a popup showing the top three perfumes chosen by previous customers.

4. Personalized Email Marketing

Every marketer knows the effectiveness of email in e-commerce marketing. You can make $38 for every $1 you spend on email marketing.

We expect email to be a significant part of your marketing strategy. With personalization, you can get more out of the emails you send.

Here are four ways to personalize your emails:

• Personalized email subjects

Businesses around the world send millions of emails each day. So, if you want your emails to stand out, you need to implement personalized email subject lines.

According to one study, customers are 26% more likely to open your email if you include a personalized subject line.

Want to make your subject line personal? Include first names in your subject lines.

• Birthdays and Anniversaries

Everyone loves birthday celebrations, especially when they are the recipients. Consider celebrating your subscribers’ birthdays. You can also celebrate your company milestones, staff birthdays, and anniversaries.

Make things more fun and engaging by adding an incentive. You can offer:

• Shopping vouchers
• Special discounts
• Time-limited sales
• Recommended products

Regardless of your offer, ensure your email clearly states how your readers can enjoy the incentive.

If you are offering a voucher, include clear instructions on how they can redeem it.

If you don’t have your subscribers’ birthday information, you can make a simple request at the footer of the emails you send. Of course, you should hint that there is something for them when they share their birthday information.

• Leverage User Behavior

It will help if you track user behavior on your website. Measure how much time they spend on each page and the type of items they spend their time viewing. You can do all of these with URL tracking.

You can create personalized emails to boost conversion and invite the person to resume shopping with the information you get.

You can also make personalized recommendations and offer discounts based on the items they search for, buy, or add to their wishlist.

Introduce the fear of missing out; your emails will convert undecided visitors into eager buyers.

• Target old customers

Personalization is not just for converting new visitors into customers. It also includes retaining old customers.

So, if you have customers who haven’t purchased anything or even visited your store for a while, you need to find ways to re-engage them.

What you should do is create an exciting and personalized subject line. The subject should enjoy attention and curiosity.

Tell them you are sending the email because they haven’t shopped, visited the website, or read your emails in a while.

Include some recommendations to get them in the shopping mood, then spur them to action with a time-based incentive such as a unique discount code or free delivery.

Recommended tool: ActiveCampaign is the perfect marketing automation solution for small businesses. It offers great features like marketing automation, CRM, and integrated email marketing.

Conclusion

Customers want personalized shopping experiences, and they are willing to share information in exchange.

All you need to do is ask the right questions politely and implement third-party tools to do all the hard work. Through email segmentation and cookies, you will be providing a highly personalized experience to every visitor.