The modern customer is more complex and demands better services from merchants than ever before. This evolution has pushed merchants to continually identify ways of making their products and services resonate with the purchasing behaviors of their modern customers. At the center of this development, customer experience personalization is providing a means of tailoring eCommerce stores to appeal to specific groups of people. One of the ways of achieving this higher level of tailoring your engagement efforts more towards smaller persona sets isby using eCommerce onsite personalization tools to deliver a personalized experience when customers visit your store.
On-Page Customer Personalization
On page customer personalization involves tailoring web pages of your eCommerce store to appeal to specific groups of customers. This could include tailoring content of a landing page to attract a specific audience or adjusting the checkout page to offer discounts to another group. Onsite features like CMS banners, dynamic content, product recommendations (cross-sells and up-sells), segmentation and custom automation paths keep your customers engaged while at your store.
CMS Banners – These banners allow merchants to display images and blocks of personalized content to specific customer segments. And, they can be scheduled for a particular period, depending on the goals to be achieved.
Dynamic Content Offers – This feature involves using geographic and demographic data to personalize offers for each customer. A merchant can dynamically change an entire content section to make it more relevant and appealing to a group of customers. For example, a sports apparel store would not want football gear content being displayed to female audiences. Similarly, they would want a specific tennis racket displayed only for audiences interested in tennis.
Product Recommendations – The feature allows merchants to include related products, up-sells, and cross-sells for the customer to add them quickly to the cart. They are excellent at encouraging additional purchases and ensure that products get more views.
Shopping Cart Price Rules – This feature allows merchants to offer discounts and promotions to specific customer segments. For instance, new customers may get a one-off discount of 20% off their first purchase while recurring customers get a 15% discount on their cart total.
Customer Personalization on Search Results
Personalization of the Search results page ensures that the search results show products that reflect the filters visitors select or have previously searched for. When customers perform a search on your online store, they expect more than just the product they’re searching for. . Instead, they expect that each click will offer them an experience custom to their taste.
Machine learning allows store users to include targeted and personalized content like buyer’s guides, user-generated content, and blog posts that improve the quality of search results.
Look at the keywords your customers use to Search for products using search ads and other methods to dynamically show site content that matches the search intent of the customers.
Email Customer Personalization
Email personalization is a strategy that uses the subscriber’s personal information to produce more targeted emails by giving individual treatment to each customer. The process involves personalizing the content to appeal to the receiver and appeal to their buying behavior. A personalized email is written in a way that it provides relevant and timely information. It could also include the customer’s name, personalized subject line, content, imagery, and more.
Apart from personalized email, eCommerce merchants can also send personalized text messages to their customers (with customer permission). SMS creates a one-off messaging platform to create a loyal customer base by sending personalized messages like happy birthday wishes and recommendations to new products based on their purchase history.
These messages are effective in engaging customers and showing them that they are valued.
Providers of Onsite Personalization Services
eCommerce merchants typically use a suite of different providers and features to power all of these unique personalizations. This will usually depend on factors like webstore host platform or the kind of personalization features a brand is looking to implement. Some of the popular providers include:
Magento – Magento offers native features like onsite banners and promo codes that personalize experiences for customers. It provides the necessary starter features for small businesses and those starting with eCommerce.
Listrak – Listrak provides personalized email services to boost sales in an eCommerce store. This includes product upsell recommendations based on customer browsing and purchasing behavior on the site.
SLI Systems – SLI personalize the search experience of your online store to include predictive results that appeal to your customers. This helps to convert more customers, sell more products, and engage more shoppers.
Celebros – Celebros is a great provider for personalized search results. They help you improve your search result page and tailor it to the kind of customer visiting your eCommerce store.
Nosto – Nosto is excellent for an onsite personalized related product, upsell, and cross recommendations. It is a great provider for robust enterprises with a vast catalog and large customer base.
Bottom Line
The modern-day customer is attracted more to brands that show they care and offer unique experiences. Onsite personalization tools are designed to bridge the gap between what a customer expects when they visit the site and what they get. This way, customers become more engaged and likely to make a purchase. Given the importance of customer personalization to the success of an ecommerce store, you need to ensure you are doing it the right way. If you would like to discuss improving personalization on your site, fill out the form on our contact page to schedule a conversation with our eCommerce experts..