10 Tips to Personalise the Content That Boosts E-Commerce Sales

Personalisation in e-commerce has always been playing a key part in customer experience and significantly improving shopping satisfaction. With the use of AI and personal data, online retailers can now connect with their audience on a deeper level and create relevant and effective user journeys that convert their customer. According to Gartner, by 2020 smart personalisation engines used to recognise customer intent will enable digital businesses to increase their profits up to 15%.

It is nothing new that customers are becoming demanding and want more relevancy when browsing online. The benefits of personalisation in e-commerce are endless, from the increase in traffic and higher engagement rate, to converting the customer and driving sales, yet many brands still fail to create experiences that inspire and attract consumers. The latest e-commerce personalisation stats say that 74% of people hate being shown irrelevant content.

Choosing the right creative e-commerce agency should be your first target, because who else is going to guide you in the right direction, help you create exceptional customer journeys and design a bespoke website that converts your visitors? The following guide to personalisation in e-commerce will help you engage your customers and implement the strategy in a scalable way.

1. Product Recommendations

Pretty accurate and most common personalisation example, implemented by platforms such as Amazon, who is said to be number one if it comes to behavioral targeting. The retailer places different product categories based on your previous browsing behavior, right in front of you. Business Insider says that this kind of personalisation can increase sales even up to 10%.

2. Personalised Search Results

Your regular customers want to find information quickly and easily. On-site search plays a vital role in building an effective user journey. By decreasing the number of clicks to find the product that may be interesting for some of your shoppers, and customising search results page, you will be able to see the results in higher conversion rates. Netflix is an excellent example of providing TV recommendations based on the content the users have previously watched, genres and actors they’re familiar with.

3. Personalised Emails

Email marketing is an excellent way to deliver personalised campaigns and reach out to your customers. Sending alerts, customised newsletters, category-specific discount coupons and follow up emails after the purchase, are all essential to connect with your shoppers and encourage them to buy at your store.

4. Geo-Location Targeting

Redirecting visitors to the right store and displaying prices in their currency will save the time and frustration that users have to go through when visiting the store online. Segment your visitors by location, inform them about shipping to their country and show relevant offers to each group. Nike is a great example of delivering personalised content, targeting consumers in different regions. During their 2018 World Cup campaign, the brand has delivered country-specific adverts on mobile devices, tailored for younger audiences that use social media more frequently.

5. Weather Based Marketing

The weather is one of the key factors determining our purchase decisions. Implementing weather-responsive campaigns in your strategy can inspire your customers to browse and complete the purchase based on the weather. Do we have a rainy week ahead of us? Why not display banners advertising raincoats that your visitors may be interested in buying at that moment. A great example of a fully personalised weather-sensitive homepage is Very.co.uk, a part of Shop Direct. The company has reported a £5 million increase in revenue after implementing this tactic.

6. Real-Time Offers

People land on your site from many different sources, such us social, paid channels or direct search. Depending on the source, you can present your visitors different real-time offers based on several factors. If you’ve noticed that a regular customer keeps coming back to your site, present them with a one-time offer to increase their loyalty and give them the reason to come back to you store. If it’s a first-timer, offer 15% off of their first purchase to convert a new customer.

7. Personalised Navigation

Purchase history and user behaviour can help you customise how visitors navigate your e-commerce. With User ID tracking you can collect browsing data of logged in users across all devices to personalise the navigation for each one of them. If they’ve been recently going through denim shirts on your website, next time they access your store you can prioritise this category, make it more visible and redirect your shopper to the right section based on their previous searches.

8. Sorting Products by Interest Level

You can go beyond simple filtering by colour, gender or price, and sort products based on how much time your customers have spent browsing the specific product pages. Each one of your shoppers will be able to see the items in a completely different order.

9. Style Finder

The best way to provide your customers a fully personalised experience is to ask them what their real interests are. By displaying different style categories for your visitors, such as glam, party, work or smart, you will get insights to your shopper’s needs. This will put you in the right direction in customising content based on their style requirements.

10. Displaying Previous Engagements

After analysing your customer’s previous purchases, you can remind them what they’ve previously bought or viewed, just before they complete the checkout process. This smart strategy will give your shoppers a quick overview of the items that may be useful to them and encourage to purchase them again.

Takeaway

As each one of these ways of personalising your content showed how beneficial it can be for your e-commerce business, you can now start implementing it to your marketing strategy and increase your revenue. Lack of personalisation is a huge drawback for any business and should be prioritised. In fact, 74% of shoppers said they feel frustrated when website content is not personalised. Customers are becoming more demanding and many brands undertake different ways of personalisation to provide exceptional customer experiences that leave their shoppers satisfied and provide exceptional customer experience.

This blog post is written by Karolina, she is a content writer for creative e-commerce agency Appnova, London that specialises in luxury brands. She loves to write content based on current e-commerce, social media and marketing trends and provide insight into the fields of customer care as well as the fashion and beauty sector.