9 Brilliant Examples of eCommerce Personalization to Boost Sales in 2020
6 Minute Read
Looking to get ahead with the latest innovations in eCommerce Personalization?
Brands cannot afford to run on a one-size-fits-all model in today’s eCommerce landscape.
Typically, your target audience will be exposed to 4,000-10,000 ads per day. This can range anywhere from a flashing ‘SALE’ ad to a strategically positioned product placement from an influencer. But in such an over saturated industry, just how effective can this be?
eCommerce Personalization is a brilliant strategy to cut through the clutter and speak directly to your audience. This involves providing personal interactions and experiences for consumers using specific, closely-targeted content.
Brands can target visitors through personalised messages and product recommendations based on demographic and shopping history. Brands who provide a more tailored and personalised online shopping experience can expect to see a boost in conversions.
Despite recent awareness around concerns in privacy laws, 83% of consumers are still willing to share their data for a more personalized shopping experience. Unsurprisingly, 91% of consumers prefer to shop with brands who offer relevant offers and recommendations. This is an important point to consider for your eCommerce personalization strategy.
This post will explore 9 innovative examples of eCommerce personalization to consider moving into 2020 – followed by some brands who use them.
eCommerce Personalization Examples
1. Geofencing
Geofencing is when you apply a ‘virtual fence’ around a specific physical location.
In modern marketing, geofencing works by triggering a command to a mobile phone when an individual enters or leaves a geofence. When a customer downloads your brand’s app, they provide permission to receive these messages – so it isn’t as sneaky as you might think!
Location-based marketing is a great way to target niche demographics and provide personalised offers and discounts. Integrating your physical location into your eCommerce personalization strategy is the perfect way to increase brand awareness of both your brick-and-mortar and online stores.
Whole Foods recently incorporated geofencing into their marketing strategy to improve their local reach.
Working with Thinknear, geofences were placed around specific Whole Food stores (along with some competitor stores too). Whenever a Whole Foods app user hit the location, they received ads containing store-specific offers. Whilst this was a great way to connect and reward existing customers, it was also a good method of targeting their competitors customers.
2. Up-selling and Free Products
Up selling is a natural part of marketing. If you walk into a shop to buy a bed, you’ll likely be up-sold a mattress – it only makes sense.
Online, it’s a little more tricky. Rather than having a sales person, your options stretch as far as chat bots and product recommendations. Suggesting more options is an effective way to increase average order value. It’s not always easy to provide suggestions, but check out how Rebellious Fashion integrated product recommendations into their eCommerce personalization strategy.
By using Bunting Personalize, Rebellious use data driven product recommendations to boost sales throughout their website. Recommendations are optimised for mobile and desktop, with different variations shown to new and exiting customers. They find most success with:
- Trending Products on homepage
- Adaptive personalised recommendations on product pages
- Recommendations on empty cart pages
3. Category-specific email offers
More brands are beginning to question the effectiveness of email marketing. In fact, only 8% of consumers say that they are very satisfied with the email marketing they receive. Of course this is because the content that they receive holds 0 value to them.
EdX does a great job at sending category-specific email marketing content.
As an e-learning platform, they know that sending every user the same message is a hit-or-miss strategy. Instead, they look into users’ course libraries and search history. With this information they can target users, offering to improve their skills to get them to the next level in their industry.
Remember, retailers who use email personalization typically generate 17% more revenue from campaign efforts.
4. Gamification
In the eCommerce industry, gamification creates user-engagement by integrating the elements of games into brands marketing campaigns.
This could be by awarding points, creating user-profiles or avatars, quizzing, awarding status levels, and so on. If you’ve ever taken a Buzzfeed quiz to determine what type of doughnuts you are, then you’ve been subject to the effects of gamification. The idea is to make a laborious task a lot more enjoyable.
Gamification applied to eCommerce stores should be tailored to your visitors. Engage them in a way that resonates with their typical shopping preferences. Check out how Warby Parker do it.
Website visitors have the option to take a quiz which will eventually lead them to the ideal glasses frames for them. After they receive their results, they are encouraged to try the frames on and of course make a purchase. What is typically a fairly frustrating job can be transformed into a fun and engaging experience.
5. Tutorials and inspiration
Incorporating relevant ‘how-to’ and tutorial videos into your content strategy is a great way to tailor helpful resources to your audience. Providing a post-sale service within your eCommerce personalization tactics does wonders for encouraging repeat purchase. In fact, a recent study suggested that 78% of internet users said that relevant content provided by brands increases purchase intent.
Online craft retailer CraftStash provide their visitors with valuable and informative content. Under their ‘Inspiration’ category they help overwhelmed or first-time customers through their vast product range. Teaching everything from calligraphy to assembling pop-up-box’s. CraftStash work within a niche industry, so their audience value from the relevant content they provide.
6. Ad Retargeting
We’ve all been browsing for a product that eventually ends up on our Facebook timeline. This is retargeting – a Google ads feature that allows you to remarket to people who visit your website. This has become an integral part of online marketing and should absolutely be considered as part of your eCommerce personalization strategy.
It is especially important if we consider that 92% of website visitors will leave without making a purchase. Leaving a huge opportunity to regain lost sales.
The good news is that because these people have shown a proactive interest in your brand, you can target ads towards them based around their previous shopping habits. Show them the products which they looked at on your site, offer a small discount for first time buyers. There’s a tone of options to choose from.
7. Shipping Options
A recent PayPal report suggested that Shipping charges was the number one reason why 43% of shoppers abandoned their carts.
Although very simple in practice, a lot of brands are losing out on sales because they lack diversity in their shipping options. eCommerce Personalization is all about tailoring an experience to suit the preferences of your visitors. In such saturated markets, not providing your visitors with the necessities will lead to empty baskets and a decline in word-of-mouth.
8. Audience-Specific Lead Magnets
Lead magnets can be a great way to gather peoples contact information – in exchange for a valuable resource. This could be something such as a free trial, discount, look book etc.
However, in their effectiveness lead magnets have not yet reached their full potential. Website visitors do not always flock to free offers. People often ignore pop-ups before even reading the title. It’s important to display your lead magnets tactically, offering this content to a relevant audience.
Check out how Berghaus use Bunting’s eCommerce Personalization to trigger a discount light box when a visitor scrolls to the exit button. This is a great way to incentivise your guests to remain on your page.
9. Chat Support
Chat support is becoming an increasingly popular tactic within eCommerce Personalization. As more Chatbot services are introduced to the industry, more brands are seeing the benefits.
If you’re not a huge corporation, chances are that you won’t have a representative to provide round-the-clock customer support. But in a recent study it was suggested that 92% of customers would abandon a company after 2-3 negative interactions – unanswered enquiries playing a major factor.
Make sure to integrate your most frequently asked questions into your chatbot. Make it as easy as possible for your customers to get answers without the help of a team member.
*There’s loads of Chatbots on the market. Why not take a look at FriendsChat? The eCommerce plugin that allows groups of friends to chat to each other whilst they browse your site.
To wrap up…
You’re losing out if you’re into 2020 without a Personalized eCommerce site.
Creating personalized messages and offers may require more creative effort and resources, but the potential increase in performance and ROI offers a significant value that cannot be ignored. Even better, your customers will enjoy a better buying experience and associate their satisfaction with your brand.
Check out Bunting Personalize and get in touch if you have any questions! 😃
