Ecommerce Personalization: What is It & How to Use It Correctly?

Renowned e-commerce brands keep a keen eye on your activities. For example, Spotify pays close attention to your every action be it the songs you listen to or the playlists you create.

Now you might think, why is Spotify going to such great lengths to learn more about your taste?

Well, the reason for such a level of monitoring is personalization. Platforms utilize this user behavior data to tailor their offerings and send personalized suggestions for boosting repeat purchases. The recommended songs and artists suggested by Spotify are the result of this personalization. 

Having a complete understanding of how customers interact with your platform allows you to greatly optimize your marketing efforts by sending highly relevant marketing messages that have the potential to get conversions and retain customers for long-term success.

To tell you honestly, personalized marketing is crucial if you wish to be different from your competitors. These days, millions of marketing messages are sent daily, and if you follow suit with them, you won’t be able to distinguish yourself from other e-commerce businesses within your vertical. According to research, 91% of customers prefer shopping with a business that sends tailored suggestions relevant to their interests.

That being said, to allow you to create a personalized e-commerce strategy, I will go over important points in this article. However, before I jump into the steps, let’s take a look at what e-commerce personalization is and the benefits it offers to your business.

What is e-commerce personalization?

As suggested by the name, e-commerce personalization is an approach adopted by brands to deliver personalized customer experience to their shoppers. What this means is showcasing relevant products to customers based on their purchasing behaviors and browsing habits. 

It doesn’t stop there. Marketing messages and promotional content are also crafted in such a way that they resonate with the customers. Leveraging the first-party data and cookies, you can track how customers behave on your e-commerce site, giving you insights into which products are better suited to their tastes. 

In e-commerce, there are various things you can personalize, such as: 

• Promotional content
• Email copies and subject lines
• Recommended products
• Tailored website suggestions
• Abandoned carts
• Exclusive offers

When you personalize your e-commerce platform, not only are you boosting the chances of getting more sales but also show your customers that you understand their preferences and are determined to provide tailored services.

Why should you utilize e-commerce personalization?

Having a personalized approach for your e-commerce business means standing out from the crowd and providing value to your customers. The biggest advantage of a personalized experience is that your visitors don’t have to look for the products they need. 

This kind of sales experience significantly increases the chances of getting conversions since you are presenting them with the products they are searching for. Additionally, as soon as a visitor lands on your website, the personalized homepage showcasing tailored products based on their previous activities can drastically reduce the bounce rates. 

A personalized user interface that adapts to customers’ behavior, allows you to take advantage of a sales psychology technique, instinct buying to convert customers who want to get done with their purchase quickly.

Furthermore, personalized offerings and messaging let you build strong relationships with your audience. For example, utilizing personalized offers to reward customers for their continued support can both establish trusting relationships and upscale your sales. 

On top of that, if you run an e-commerce store with a large number of products, customers might have a hard time making a purchasing decision if they are browsing through your catalog. With a personalized e-commerce experience, you can direct your customers in the right direction, helping them identify the right products that best fit their needs.

Lastly, with new e-commerce brands popping up almost every day, distinguishing yourself from the competition. Offering personalized suggestions and tailored customer experiences can be a unique selling point for your brand.

How to implement an e-commerce personalization strategy for your business?

Till now, you might have gotten a good idea of what e-commerce personalization is and why you should consider it for your online store, now let’s check out the ways to incorporate it into your e-commerce brand, compelling customers to keep coming back to your store. 

Utilize smart product suggestions 

If you have browsed Amazon, whenever you search for a product, the platform automatically shows you similar products. These personalized product pages are nothing more than an example of e-commerce personalization.

Collecting browsing data based on customer’s search history or past purchases can easily give you an idea of what they are looking to buy. For instance, if a customer purchases a coffee kit to brew homemade coffee, they would for sure be interested in getting coffee powder or beans. By suggesting these products in the “for you’ section of your website, you can enable customers to make prompt purchasing decisions.

To utilize these personalized product pages, you can leverage the first-party data collection techniques. What I mean by this is you can ask customers about their preferences or use the information on the type of products they search for on your platform. 

For gathering first-party data, you can ask customers to choose categories or products they are interested in at the time of sign-up. You can also conduct periodic surveys to gauge seasonal preferences to showcase your seasonal offerings. 

These kinds of initiatives allow you to adopt a relationship-selling approach, where the primary focus is on building a relationship with the customer and secondly on making a sale. With timely engagement and continuous follow-ups, you ensure customers that you are interested in enhancing their shopping experience. 

Using tools like Zixflow, you can design custom customer survey forms and questionnaires to better understand your customers and needs. Plus, you can share these forms across the channels of your choice, including via email, SMS, WhatsApp, or any other social media platform. 

You can also integrate these forms into your e-commerce website to collect valuable information whenever a customer signs up or reaches out to you. The video below will help you understand how to create forms using Zixflow: 

Leverage personalized marketing messages

Recommending complementary products when a user browses through your platform is one way to personalize your e-commerce experience but if you want to provide a well-rounded, tailored customer engagement, you need to include your messaging. 

E-commerce, like any other business, requires a solid marketing strategy to showcase your products. E-commerce marketing revolves around various channels to connect with your audience and nurture them throughout the customer journey, ultimately, resulting in a sale. 

So, it makes sense to send personalized offers to your target audience, compelling them to take the next step. Once again, a user’s purchase history and shopping habits play a huge role in figuring out which kind of marketing messages are most effective in getting a response. 

After you have a decent knowledge of these aspects, a good place to start personalizing your outreach is to divide your audience into smaller segments based on the similarities in past interactions and buying patterns. Then you can craft personalized messages for them depending on the marketing channels you use. 

For example, emails have a different structure than WhatsApp or text messages. With emails, you have to write a personalized subject line and body content to attract attention. While with WhatsApp, you require a more conversational tone to convey your message. 

Here is an example of a personalized marketing email:

Subject: "Just for You, [First Name]! ✨"

Hey [First Name],

Based on your recent browsing, here are some of the top picks from our catalog that you might like:

• Product 1 - Description + Image
• Product 2 - Description + Image

Enjoy [A Personalized Offer] on your next order!

CTA - [Shop Now]

And here is an example of a personalized WhatsApp marketing message to send on a special occasion, like a birthday: 

[First Name], it’s your special day! 🎉🥳

We at [Your Brand Name] want to make your birthday even better with a special gift just for you! 🎁

Enjoy [X]% OFF on your next purchase with code [Discount Code]

Shop Now: [Link]

Wishing you a fantastic birthday filled with love and happiness! 🎂

As you can see, the content and tone of both these messages are different. So, you have to find out what your customers like and write highly relevant promotional content to make sure your messages don’t get ignored. 

If all of this sounds like too much work, you can leverage the AI-powered tools to generate message copies within seconds. By entering basic information about your audience, tone, objective, and CTA of the message, you can get a tailored message within minutes.

Built a list of top-selling items

Oftentimes it can happen that customers might not know what they want to buy. They might simply be browsing through your products until something catches their eye, and in most cases, these are your bestselling ones. 

So, why not create a list of your top-performing products and make it readily available on your platform? By doing so, your customers might not think twice about getting them, enabling you to boost your sales. 

For example, a fashion retail brand, About You, personalizes its “for you” page after a customer logs into their account. The personalization includes a list of products curated based on their past purchases along with the best sellers to highlight the top products.

You can select your top products not only by the sales but also by the reviews and ratings they receive from the customers. A popular product will have a lot of reviews from previous customers, adding the element of credibility to it and compelling new users to make a purchase. 

Leverage dynamic content 

Dynamic content modifies the content a visitor sees according to their geographical location, interest, and behavior. For instance, if it is a return visitor, you can suggest similar products on the login page based on their browsing history. 

Again, having an idea about what your customers are looking for, allows you to adopt a dynamic content strategy. A good starting point would be:

• Obtaining customer behavior data like past purchases and interactions
• Demographic details including gender, age, and location
• Action-based data, such as cart abandonments, additions, and customer support tickets

After you have the required details, divide your customers into smaller groups of first-time or returning customers and incorporate the dynamic content. And as your business scales, you can put in place a more tailored e-commerce marketing strategy for enhanced customer experience. 

In addition to that, you have to keep an eye on the engagement metrics to ensure the steps you have taken to leverage dynamic content are well-received by your customers. If you see a surge in customer interactions or higher conversions, then your dynamic content is working as it should. 

On the other hand, if you observe a downward trend or no change in your bottom line, then you need to experiment with your personalization approach. 

Implement tailored pop-ups

Driving traffic to your website takes a lot of resources. So, you need to make sure that you take advantage of all the available components to help you convert these visitors into customers. 

Pop-ups are one of the most common ways to encourage visitors to take action, be it signing up for your email newsletter or closing more deals. 

By putting custom triggers for your website, you can make these pop-ups appear automatically based on the customer behavior. For example, if the customer has added any items to the cart and hasn’t finished the checkout, you can send tailored pop-ups to inform customers about their items promptly. 

In contrast, if it is a first-time user, then you can send welcome pop-ups containing exclusive offers, increasing the likelihood of them making a purchase.

To design these pop-ups and add them to your site, you can utilize tools like OptinMonster or Poptin. These tools provide you with a drag-and-drop editor, enabling you to easily craft your pop-ups, adjust various settings, and make them live instantly.

Personalized customer support automation 

Your role as an e-commerce business doesn’t end with making a sale. You have to provide an equally robust post-sale experience to the customers, ensuring they keep coming back for repeat purchases. 

On top of that, returns, support tickets, and assistance on how to use the product are common occurrences within e-commerce. And you cannot hope to have your customer service teams handle all of them manually. 

This is why, setting up AI-powered chatbots allows you to manage frequent customer questions and streamline the entire support process, requiring human intervention only for critical issues. 

Additionally, you can train these chatbots to leverage the customer information stored in your database to craft relevant responses that best fit their needs. 

For instance, using behavioral data, the chatbot can suggest personalized recommendations that complement a customer’s previous purchases. Plus, once the order is processed, customers can interact with the bot to track the shipping status of their order in real-time.

Having said that, to create a chatbot for your online brand, you require automation tools that come with chatbot functionality across multiple channels. One such tool is Zixflow, as it lets you design a custom chatbot for WhatsApp and RCS using its no-code editor.

Personalized checkout 

Checkouts are the most important part of any business. It is here that your customers finally complete the sales process and place their orders. 

So, you want to make the checkout process as seamless as possible, with minimal distractions. However, once the checkout process is done, you can recommend tailored, complementary products on the order confirmation page. This way, you can cross-sell your inventory while also adding value to customers’ purchases.

Another way to personalize this experience is by offering gift cards or exclusive discounts to encourage future purchases. Loyalty and reward programs also allow you to build strong relationships along with a customer-centric sales methodology.

Adopt an e-commerce personalization strategy to boost your bottom line effectively

In this ever-evolving world of digital commerce, e-commerce personalization is no longer optional. It has become an essential tool for you to thrive in the competitive online marketplace. 

By leveraging data, AI, and strategic marketing efforts, you can create highly personalized shopping experiences that enhance customer satisfaction, increase conversions, and drive long-term growth.

The key to successful personalization lies in balancing relevance with privacy, continuously testing strategies, and maintaining a holistic approach across all e-commerce channels. 

By implementing the steps outlined in this guide, your e-commerce business can stay ahead of the curve and provide customers with the engaging experiences they expect.

So, are you ready to transform your e-commerce business with personalization? Start by leveraging an advanced marketing and communication platform, Zixflow to craft tailored customer engagement. Sign up for a free 7-day trial or schedule a demo with us to help you figure out how our platform can let you drive conversions efficiently.