Ecommerce Personalization

Ecommerce Personalization

What is Ecommerce Personalization?

Ecommerce Personalization is the term used by online retailers that refers to the practice of creating personal interactions and experiences on eCommerce sites by dynamically showing content, media, or product recommendations based on browsing behavior, purchase history data, demographics and psychographics.

To begin the journey to advanced eCommerce personalization, any company with a transactional eCommerce site should be able to capture data and personalize experiences based on:

  • Context
    • Type of device
    • Time of day
    • Time and location
    • Referral source
  • Behavior
    • Recently viewed products and categories
    • Items from abandoned carts
  • History
    • Past purchases
    • Loyalty program member
    • Past email interactions

Beyond those initial data points, there are thousands more that can be considered, but a human could never take all of them into account. With the help of machine learning, the personalization platform is able to consider all these different data points as context to determine what will work best for the customer in real-time.

Ecommerce Personalization Goal Metrics

In order to measure success, a business must first define the goal metrics for its personalization efforts. Retailers frequently use personalization to optimize for Revenue, Conversion Rate, Bounce Rate, or Engagement; but you might also choose to develop your own metrics or choose from a variety of other options, including:

  • Average Page Views
  • Add-to-Cart Rate
  • Cart Abandonment Rate
  • Revenue Per Session
  • Average Order Value
  • Total Time on Site
  • And more…

Multi-Device Ecommerce Personalization

Increasingly, customers are using more than one device to interact with brands. Retailers who are tracking their customers across multiple devices are able to gain valuable data on who their most valuable customers are, how often those customers are interacting with their brand, and what those on-site experiences look like. Statistics show significant increases in product view rate, purchase rate and average order value with multi-device versus single device personalization:

  • Product view rate is 88% v. 58%
  • Purchase rate is 55% v. 6%
  • AOV is $130 v. $115

As a result, the customers who receive all the benefits of a more cohesive, personalized experience, are able to deliver more value to the retailer as a direct result of being recognized throughout their journey.

Read the latest EQ from Monetate, The Cross-Device Imperative, and get the stats and insights that guide the industry.

Ecommerce and Omnichannel Personalization

Until now, personalization has been primarily limited to online channels. Digital-only approaches are still valuable, but in the customer’s mind, they have one relationship with you—not one for every channel. That relationship needs to be consistent across all interactions, whether online, offline, in-store, in email, or on mobile. To create an experience that makes the customer feel truly recognized, your personalization platform and strategy need to be in all of those places.

The Benefits of Omnichannel Personalization include:

  • Ability to personalize products, content, and copy on any customer channel
  • Linking customers’ online behavior to in-store by notifying local stores via their clienteling app when a particular user browsed specific items online
  • Linking customers’ online browsing behavior to personalize the in-app experience and trigger relevant push notifications leveraging geofencing
  • Enabling a POS feedback loop that ensures that online product recommendations and email promotions can be individualized to reflect in-store purchases.