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Ecommerce Personalization: Tips, Tricks and Benefits

8 min read

When was the last time you had a completely seamless shopping experience with a business? Surprisingly, with all the technology and software out there for ecommerce retailers, a smooth customer experience is more difficult to come by than you may realize. Why is that, exactly?

Whether businesses simply aren’t prioritizing personalization or they don’t think their customers notice, they’re wrong.

Personalization is critical to building a brand, fostering customer loyalty, and experiencing growth as a business.

So, how can your ecommerce shop leverage personalization to achieve these lofty goals?

What is Ecommerce Personalization?

Simply put, ecommerce personalization refers to the steps a business should take to create tailored online shopping experiences for its customers.

Personalization is achieved by creating relevant content, promotions, product recommendations, and unique offers that are designed to cater to specific audiences, their preferences, interests, and behaviors.

For example, some brands send targeted emails to segmented customer lists that are customized to this group’s specific interests or previously purchased products to drive sales.

Personalization can be approached from many perspectives, but it’s important to offer relevant content and to keep the users’ preferences top of mind as you build a personalization strategy.

Benefits of Personalization in Ecommerce

Now that you understand what personalization is in the online shopping world, let’s highlight the benefits of leveraging personalization for your business.

Drive Sales

In the digital shopping experience, customers often have to weed through pages of products and shop around to find exactly what they’re looking for.

Personalization removes the headache for shoppers by helping them find exactly what they’re looking for. In doing so, you can turn window shoppers into customers, thanks to the tailored content that helps them find what they need.

Ramp Up Customer Experience

It may be a consumer-driven world, but that doesn’t mean the average consumers around the world are having simple shopping experiences. Quite the opposite, actually!

With too many products to browse through, many shoppers simply give up and leave a website without making a purchase.

By using customer data to make product recommendations or sending tailored offers and promotions, you’re making the shopping experience easier and less overwhelming.

Improve Customer Service

Personalization can also greatly improve your company’s customer service offering. By hosting an AI virtual assistant on your website, customers can ask questions, inquire about orders, get shipping updates, and much more through the guidance of an AI chatbot.

Build a Loyal Following

Here’s a compelling fact – according to Twilio’s 2023 State of Personalization report, 56% of consumers say they will become repeat customers after experiencing personalization in their shopping experience.

What does this mean for your business? There’s a huge opportunity for growth through personalization! You can build a loyal following, improve customer retention, and reduce churn.

Many consumers are hesitant to engage in data gathering and personalization performed by AI. However, we expect to see these behaviors shift as artificial intelligence becomes more widely accepted in online retail settings.

Stay Ahead of the Curve

Deploying ecommerce personalization trends on your website or ecommerce shop will give your brand a significant competitive advantage.

By leveraging customer data, you can send tailored offers, discounts, and promotions to shoppers, and ultimately, win their business.

Ecommerce Personalization Tips & Tricks

Here are the most effective ways to utilize ecommerce personalization trends to your company’s advantage.

Audience Segmentation

Most ecommerce platforms offer options for segmentation, where you can create segments that target your brand’s different audiences simultaneously. You can segment audiences based on the following:

Location or IP address to offer tailored search results and product recommendations
Devices, including a smartphone, desktop, or tablet
Demographics, like age, gender, or job title
New or returning customers to target content and products based on their lifecycle

Product Recommendations

Product recommendations are based on previous purchases and insights about a shopper’s interests and preferences. Site recommendations can even leverage data about what pages a customer browsed the last time they were on your website to offer relevant products today.

Prioritize Shopping Cart Abandonment

With nearly 70 percent of consumers abandoning their shopping carts, it becomes vital for companies to prioritize shopping cart abandonment to win back that business.

Brands can remind shoppers of their abandoned carts through personalized email reminders and by serving retargeting ads of previously viewed products.

Browsing for Ecommerce Personalization Software

Some businesses opt for ecommerce personalization software that can do the heavy lifting for them. These tools offer services including:

AI-powered recommendations
Powerful customer segmentation
Robust customer data and analytics

Your company’s choice of personalization software will vary depending on budget, goals, product, and what your vision of a solid customer experience entails.

Compelling Ecommerce Personalization Examples

Here are some examples of simple yet powerful personalization that can drive sales and build customer loyalty.

Show shoppers similar products to the ones they’re already viewing, and upsell products at a higher price point.
Make continuous shopping recommendations based on shoppers’ previously visited pages.
Create dynamic best-seller lists that include the most viewed products, popular products by location, or most reviewed.
Offer user-generated content to showcase your products being used by real customers through shoppable posts collected via Instagram.
Trigger time-sensitive pop-up windows with promo codes to drive up order value, using language like “Check out in the next 7 minutes and receive 20% off!”
Send texts and emails with messaging including “We miss you! Come back and shop for 10% off,” check in with shoppers after their purchase, or nudge them to finish their purchase after abandoning their cart.
Engaging with customers on social media, asking for feedback, answering questions, and building a rapport.
Creating loyalty programs that offer repeat customers rewards, discounts, and special offers for their commitment to the brand.

Win Big with Personalization. Ecwid can help.

Thinking about starting your first ecommerce store? Ecwid is the perfect partner. Our selling platform can be integrated with various platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Etsy, and more. Our platform offers one easy-to-use dashboard, which makes it a breeze to see the performance of all your storefronts at a glance.

To learn more, check out the rest of our blog posts or click here to get started for free today.

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Feb 16, 2024

About the author

Max has been working in the ecommerce industry for the last six years helping brands to establish and level-up content marketing and SEO. Despite that, he has experience with entrepreneurship. He is a fiction writer in his free time.