Insights · 4 min read
E-commerce: the power of personalization
Personalisation has become essential to modern e-commerce success. Learn how to strategically implement it across your digital channels to enhance customer experience and drive growth.
Thanks to the growth of online shopping, the retail landscape has expanded significantly in recent years. To stand out from the crowd, you need to offer modern customers something extra in terms of convenience and experience.
Personalizing shopping experiences is one of the best ways to add value to the customer journey. The importance of personalization is widely recognized. However, many companies still struggle with its implementation. This guide explores how to smartly implement personalization in practice and the various forms of personalization you can use to provide each customer with the best possible shopping experience.
Why personalize?
The days when a good product and a competitive price guaranteed success have been behind us for a while now. Products and services have become more interchangeable, while customers are demanding higher levels of service from companies and stores. Offering unique customer experiences is the key to success in the modern e-commerce landscape.
Research shows that personalization positively influences the purchasing decisions of many customers. The emotional engagement resulting from a good personalization strategy also leads to a higher customer lifetime value. Engaged buyers tend to stay customers for longer and are more willing to recommend you to their acquaintances and friends. There is a lot to gain if you seriously invest in personalization.
Set goals
To choose the right strategy, you need to know why you are going to personalize. Without clear goals, your personalization efforts will have little effect. Do you mainly want to increase customer satisfaction? Is increasing your conversion rate the most important goal? Do you want to improve your customer service? Or do you personalize mainly to avoid losing existing customers? Ask yourself those questions before you get started.
Forms of personalization
Personalizing customer experiences can be done in various ways.
Language and product offering
Especially in the case of B2B, the foundation often involves personalization based on language, currency, and product offering. This way, you clarify what products and/or services are precisely available in your country and location.
Customer-specific pricing agreements
Depending on your model, customer-specific pricing agreements are often an essential form of personalization. You apply different margins per customer (group) and can configure them in your e-commerce systems as you see fit. Such pricing agreements typically go hand in hand with segmentation-level personalization.
Segment-level personalization
Personalizing at the segment level means tailoring the experience precisely to the type of customer. A business like a garden center sees a completely different product offering and layout compared to a local florist. This makes sense because both businesses are seeking a different customer experience. A garden center operates more like a wholesaler, looking for reliable and popular products at competitive prices. A specialized florist, on the other hand, aims for a more consumer-like customer experience focused on beautiful and inspiring plants.
Personalization based on purchase behaviour
Personalization based on purchase behavior and other website click behavior is also a popular form of personalization. Consider these examples:
- Showcasing specific products, product categories, or brands at the top of the homepage during a customer’s 3rd or 4th visit, using their purchase history
- Creating logical links to other products and product categories based on recommendations and potentially localizing them
- Offering additional assistance to potential customers expected to convert, possibly with a pop-up asking how you can assist them
- Providing targeted ads to browsers who haven’t yet purchased, aligned with their interests and browsing behavior
- Using well-coordinated omnichannel approaches to reach customers across multiple touchpoints based on their preferred shopping channels
Personalize = analyze data
A successful personalization strategy in modern e-commerce is data-driven. This means acquiring as much information as possible about the customer by utilizing the data they leave behind during their customer journey. The accumulation of purchase histories, breadcrumbs, click behavior, abandoned shopping carts, website visits, and social media activities creates an almost inexhaustible data reservoir.
Data analysis starts relatively simply by first looking at categories such as location, customer segment, and demographic profile. The next step is to dig deeper using tools like analytics and AI. This allows you to truly personalize and create predictive analyses that anticipate what and how the customer will purchase. Many sellers still have a world to explore in this field, especially when it comes to improving and connecting the various digital channels they use.
