We’ve all been there. Irrelevant product recommendations—stuff like recommendations for a scarf when you’re browsing swimsuits.

“They must know I’m getting ready to head to the beach… can’t we do better than this? It’s 2015!” you say to yourself.

Why do most product recommendation engines fail to deliver truly helpful recommendations? Why aren’t they living up to their full potential?

We teamed up with L2 to deliver a report on ecommerce personalization in 2015. Product recommendations was one of the topics they covered.

To create the report, the analysts acted like the online equivalent of “mystery shoppers.” They bought items from 100+ major retailers, determined if the retailers were using ecommerce personalization strategies, and analyzed the results.

For more about industry best practices for product recommendations, download your copy of the full report.