Personalising your customers’ website experience can yield a number of benefits; from building loyalty and repeat purchases to driving higher conversions and sales revenue. In this blog, we look at 5 strategies your business can adopt to build an effective personalisation strategy.
Hands down, one of the best and most widely known examples of personalisation done right is what Amazon did on its site. But today, since we are familiar with the Amazon case study, let’s look at another popular brand which did just as well and got its personalisation strategy right – Walmart.
Walmart’s Digital Transformation Journey
Walmart, if you remember, had a great operations strategy that made it stand out from its competitors. But, it faced a serious threat from Amazon because of its late digital adoption. However, the brand did make up for lost time and pulled together a great digital transformation, which earned it the title of a ‘digital disruptor’ in the retail space.
So, what did Walmart do to incorporate digitisation and personalisation into its everyday operations?
- It revamped the whole website with a more interactive and enhanced user experience
- It used its large repository of customer data to draw insights into the customers’ demographic data, past purchase history and browsing patterns. It used these insights to come up with personalised recommendations for each customer based on their location, age, past purchases and preferences.
- It brought this personalisation to its physical stores as well. For example, it identified the geolocation of customers and started notifying them of nearest product availability, and offers running in nearby stores.
The result? Walmart saw its unique visitors grow from 55 million to 85 million and revenue from sales grow by leaps and bounds.
According to McKinsey, businesses that get their personalisation strategy right have a chance to increase their sales revenue by 40%. In fact, customers are willing to share their data to get more personalised recommendations as well. Data shows that 60% of customers are willing to be repeat customers if the brand they are interacting with delivers relevant, personalised recommendations.
Bringing personalisation into ecommerce has a number of benefits;
- The very obvious first one being increase in conversions and sales revenue
- Driving more enhanced customer engagement
- Increased customer loyalty and rise in repeat customers
- Competitive advantage
- Increase in average order size
For example, let’s say a customer is browsing for tank tops on a retail website. Personalisation strategies such as showing matching pants and shoes that can go with the attire, or showing recently viewed products, or showing other relevant products that may go with the attire will lead the customer to purchase more than one item, thus increasing the average order value.
While this is just one instance, there are a number of strategies that ecommerce businesses can adopt to develop an effective personalisation strategy. Let’s look at what they are.
5 Ways to personalise eCommerce customer experience
- Create a personalised homepage
Take stock of your customers’ past purchases and browsing history and use these insights to create a personalised homepage with products they may find useful, and products they have purchased in the past. For example, when you log into your Amazon account, the homepage shows really relevant information for each user; items you may want to buy again, items from your past purchases and searches which are on sale, deal of the day, and bestselling products based on your interests. Data shows that brands that have personalised their homepage have influenced 85% of their customers to make a purchase.
- Develop product page recommendations
Similar to the example we wrote about earlier, when a customer is viewing a product, show them products that can go along with the one they are viewing. In fact, you can also show them what others liked and are buying and products that the customer recently viewed. This is likely to nudge them to make a purchase, and at times, make more than one purchase.
- Showcase peer reviews
It’s one thing to show studio shots of the product you’re selling and a whole other to show photos, videos and reviews of what other customers who actually bought the product have to say about it. Making reviews prominent is a great way to nudge customers to take their product to the cart.
- Cart to Purchase
In fact, one of the most common things we all do is to add a product to a cart or wishlist and leave it there for a long, long time. Sometimes, even until it goes out of stock or out of fashion. Brands that have access to customers’ email and/or phone number can use retargeting to nudge buyers into taking their product from cart to purchase. For example, you can send a personalised email with an offer on products in the customer’s cart that are on sale right now. Or, when the customer revisits the site, you can show them what they have in their cart – think of it as something like the continue watching feature on Netflix.
- Provide a personalised shopping guide
Sometimes shopping can be a confusing experience if you don’t know what you need or what will suit you best (be it clothes, furniture or home appliances). At such times, having access to personalised content (be it blogs, videos, or lists) on how you can use your product can help take the step towards a purchase.
A Merit expert says, “Especially today, when using customer data to drive campaigns can be quite tricky, it’s always best to seek customers’ consent where their data is being used to deliver personalised experiences to them.
As a thumb rule, what also contributes to a great customer experience is being subtle in nudging customers towards a purchase, rather than bombarding them with promotional emails, SMS or social media ads. The key here is to be subtle and spot on with delivering a personalised shopping experience for your customers.”
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