Personalization is certainly trending. People monogram clothing and accessories, customize vehicles, custom-design cell phone covers, and so much more! It's easy to see why personalization is considered to be a key element in increasing the revenue and growing the customer base of your e-commerce store. This is your guide to creating a personalized shopping experience for your audience and converting visitors into loyal customers.
A New Perspective
E-commerce stores and brick and mortar businesses have more in common than you may think. Those who own brick and mortar stores arrange their store and sales process in a logical way that makes the most sense to visitors walking through the door and provides the highest chance of conversion to sales. This is how you should approach your e-commerce store as well. Your home page is the front door and all other pages are the different areas of your store. Make sure your online store is easy to navigate and understand. Once you get your visitors to the front door, it's up to you to convince them to purchase your product. This is accomplished through online personalization.
What is E-Commerce Personalization?
E-commerce personalization is a process that online retailers use to deliver personal interactions and experiences to visitors on their e-commerce sites. This is accomplished by various methods including how content is delivered, recommendations that are made, visitor history, demographics, and so much more. In an increasingly digital age, a personalized shopping experience is now more important than ever.
The Importance of a Personalized Shopping Experience
There are several reasons you should personalize your e-commerce store. These include:
- Online shoppers expect personalization. It is no longer a perk, but rather a requirement.
- A personalized shopping experience makes customers feel special and appreciated, which improves their overall shopping experience.
- Customers who feel special are loyal which translates into higher conversion rates for your e-commerce store.
- Personalization helps to increase brand awareness and trust.
- Re-engage users who may otherwise never revisit with personalized marketing techniques.
The Importance of Personalizing Your E-Commerce Store
Thanks to cookies you are able to understand a tremendous amount about the behavior of visitors to your store. The ability to capture browsing history allows you to create and deliver a personalized shopping experience right to their desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. Here's how.
Provide Personalized Assistance Guides
Depending on the types of products your online company sells, you can offer quizzes to help visitors decide which product(s) is right for them. You can also offer style or size guides if you are in the clothing industry to help buyers make more informed purchasing decisions. For example, let's say your e-commerce store sells computers. Visitors may be overwhelmed by the number of choices and not know which product will best fit their needs. An interactive quiz that explores what they expect from a computer and how they plan on using it can help them decide which computer is best. This strategy can also help potential consumers feel more comfortable making a purchase.
You can also take this technique a step further by recommending products according to quiz results and browsing history. Third-party quiz generators allow you to customize your own quiz and integrate it seamlessly onto your e-commerce site.
Show Recently Viewed and Related Items
It is advantageous to incorporate a "Recently Viewed" section for returning visitors. If a user viewed a product, it means they had an interest in that product and considered a purchase. Make it easy for the visitor to pick up where they left off by placing this section directly on the home page. Include a strong call to action and even consider adding a section for related products and brands. Let's stick with the e-commerce store that sells computers for simplicity. You can incorporate a section near the top of the home page that lists recently viewed items. Each item can be easily clicked on directly from the home page. A different section can have either different brands that have similar products or complementary products such as a mouse, computer case, speakers, etc. Incorporating both of these sections into your home page increases the chances of not only a sell but an upsell as well.
Third-party widgets installed directly on your home page, capture, and use visitor browser history to automatically generate "Recently Viewed" and "Recently Related" items when visitors return.
Deliver Personalized Home Pages
Delivering personalized home pages means that you have a generic home page for first-time visitors that show a wide range of products that appeal to every target audience. After a potential consumer visits your page, you are able to see which products or categories he or she was most interested in. Next time the same visitor comes to your site, the home page that they see is one with only relevant products based on their browsing history.
For instance, the first time a visitor comes to your website, he or she will see laptops, desktops, notebooks, and more. Let's say the visitor clicks on notebooks and browses for a few minutes before exiting your site. The next time that same visitor stops by he or she will be met with a home page offering notebooks, making it relevant and personal to that one visitor.
Offer Live Chat, Video, and Screen Sharing
Offering Live Chat, Video, and Screen Sharing directly on your e-commerce store allows consumers to ask questions that are preventing them from making a purchase. The ability to obtain instant answers leads to a higher chance that the visitor will make a purchase and reduces the instances of cart abandonment.
Let's say a potential consumer wants to know whether a computer has a specific capability. The ability to get an answer on the spot will most likely be the difference in a missed sale and a completed purchase. If a customer cannot locate a certain item, the use of screen sharing allows the support agent to show them exactly where to go to find the product they're looking for. Drag-and-drop widgets are available for different mediums of chat, including Facebook, Shopify, and more that allow you to generate automated responses and stay in touch with your customers.
Personalize Based on Geographic Location
If your e-commerce store sales worldwide, it is important to make sure visitors from every country and location feel comfortable purchasing from your site. There are two things you need to do to ensure this is the case:
- Personalize based on location — Make sure the products that appear on the home page are relevant to your audience. For instance, it is irrelevant to promote winter clothing to visitors who live near the equator.
- Personalize based on language — Visitors from another country may speak a different language and use different measurements than your store's home-base country. The need to seek out conversion charts and double-check to make sure they are purchasing the right size or paying the right amount can make many visitors uncomfortable. This leads to them leaving the site before making a purchase.
Cookies allow you to determine where visitors to your site are located and third-party apps automatically deliver the appropriate content at the perfect time.
Deliver Personalized Campaigns
Personalized marketing campaigns based on user behavior can make all the difference in the success and growth of your e-commerce store. Let's take a look at great tips for making sure that your campaigns are tailored to each visitor:
- Offer first-time visitors an incentive to subscribe to your email list. You may offer 10% off on their first order or the promise of exclusive promotions and coupons in the future.
- Show a different personalized message if the visitor has already subscribed. For instance, "We are so happy you are back! Look what we have recently added that you may like".
- Personalize email subject lines and make sure that they pique the reader's curiosity. For example, "Dylan, we found this just for you".
- Offer special discounts and promotions for birthdays, anniversaries, and other milestones. You can even capture each subscriber's birthday and send them an exclusive discount in honor of their special day.
Integrated third-party apps along with the use of cookies allow you to set parameters for sending custom emails to subscribers informing them of promotions, discounts, or subtly reminding them of the items they left in their cart.
Personalized Shopping Experiences Increase Revenue
The bottom line is that creating personalized experiences for your online visitors is easy to implement while giving your e-commerce store the ability to significantly increase revenue. ScreenMeet is here to help you with all of your IT solutions including enterprise tools for customer support, CRM integration, and so much more! If you're ready to see what ScreenMeet can do for your online store, request a demo today!
