20th March 2019
Jon Billingsley
4 Minute ReadEcommerce personalisation is one of the biggest trends in online shopping at the moment. In short, it means providing a bespoke, personalised experience to customers and website visitors, whether that’s through emails, pay-per-click ads or just their time on-site.
In the highly competitive world of ecommerce, it’s more important than ever to meet the changing needs and expectations of consumers. Personalisation could be the trend that gives you the edge over other brands. In this post we’re going to take a closer look at ecommerce personalisation, how it can boost your ecommerce business and the stats to prove it…
Increase conversion rates
By tailoring your website content, email marketing strategy or even your ads to target a specific audience, your brand message automatically becomes more persuasive. This will increase the likelihood of visitors or browsers converting into sales. In fact, Econsultancy’s Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2017 reported that 93% of companies noticed an uplift in conversion rates when using personalisation strategies. So, which strategies are most effective?
Personalised homepage
As the first port of call for potential shoppers and delivering the key brand message, your homepage is the most important part of your website. But is yours living up to its full potential? Your website’s homepage has the biggest influence when it comes to personalisation, potentially increasing sales by up to 7%.
Let’s say your site sells two distinct products, womenswear and menswear for example. You could see a significant increase in sales if you show existing customers the category they have shown interest in. So, if the past few times they have visited the site, they navigated exclusively to menswear, you can assume this is their main interest and show them relevant products.
Alternatively, if the visitor browses a wide range of your products, you can include recently reviewed products – or those similar to past purchases for return customers.
Speak to an expert
Ecommerce personalisation can be hard to wrap your head around. If it’s done wrong, you might appear too pushy and risk alienating customers. Done right, however, it can be a powerful tool. That’s where the team at Bing Digital can help.
We are ecommerce experts, having supported the growth of large and small businesses across the UK. We can help you in eCommerce System Integration. We are also a full-fledged Shopify Agency.
Use customer details
One key personalisation strategy that is often overlooked by brands is simply making the most of what they already have. Ecommerce businesses aren’t utilising the basic information that they have from repeat customers or those signed up to regular newsletters. Instead of personalising content using customer details, many brands are simply sending out one-size-fits-all email marketing campaigns, which do not generate the click-through rates that they should.
According to SalesForce, 57% of online shoppers are happy to share personal data, including their name, date of birth and email address, in exchange for personalised offers or discounts. So, whether you include individual recommended products in your emails or send birthday discounts, upping your personalised email campaigns is a sure-fire way to boost your bottom line.
Show relevant content
While utilising personal data to offer individual discounts and recommendations can increase your sales, research by Pure360 suggests that basic ecommerce personalisation is less effective than you may think. Using a customer’s first name in an email, for instance, may only encourage 8% of shoppers to engage with your brand, and sending a birthday email, without including a discount, only has an effect on 7%.
Similarly, Segment’s State of Personalisation Report 2017 suggests that just 22% of shoppers are currently satisfied with the level of personalisation they currently receive, with the majority wanting more from brands. In order to keep your marketing relevant, innovative and interesting, ecommerce businesses must think outside the box and create unique, eye-catching campaigns that will increase awareness.
For instance, Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign, which saw personalised bottles being sold across the world, was a worldwide success, with over 150 million bottles sold in the UK alone. Or, take inspiration from Spotify’s “Thanks 2016, it’s been weird” campaign, using hyper-localised user data to create humorous, quirky posters reflecting the most unusual listening habits in the area that year.
Follow up emails
If a shopper has visited your site, taken a look around, added some items to the basket and then suddenly just abandoned the cart at the last second, it’s up to you to chase it up. By sending a behavioural triggered email, you can remind potential customers of your amazing products or services, encouraging them to come back and complete their purchase.
Unlike customer data focused marketing, behavioural triggered emails cannot go out of date and will always be relevant, as they are based on the customer’s latest action. These email campaigns also increase click-through rates, outperforming standard newsletters by 300%.
Long term results
One of the mistakes many brands make when it comes to ecommerce personalisation is to expect to see results overnight. Unfortunately, it takes time to see substantial results and giving up after a few weeks if you don’t notice a significant difference is only going to hinder your progress.
Personalisation is a trial-and-error task, and not all solutions will work well for every brand. Your company may benefit massively from a personalised homepage, for instance, while others may not notice too much of a difference. It’s a case of trying out the different strategies for a significant amount of time and monitoring results closely.
It’s also important to ensure you’re looking at relevant metrics. A number of brands may feel their new personalised campaigns are unsuccessful because they are analysing the wrong results or looking at analytics as a whole. If you make changes to your home page or email marketing, you need to look at how those specific changes are impacting your sales and conversions.
Read More: The Benefits of Proper eCommerce Shopping Site Design
