It is a truth universally acknowledged that the success of any eCommerce business depends largely on how well you can retain your customers. And one of the key strategies for customer retention is eCommerce personalization–the process by which you tailor your offerings and the shopping experience for each individual customer. Let’s find out more.
Research has shown time and time again that customers are loyal to businesses who put their needs first and go above and beyond to cater to them. In fact, a study has shown that brands risk losing 38% of customers due to poor eCommerce personalization efforts.
That’s why, if you want your online store to succeed, you want to come up with interesting eCommerce personalization strategies to skyrocket your sales. In this blog, we are gonna show you some tried and tested eCommerce personalization strategies you can use to connect with your customers and make them return to your store.
eCommerce Personalization: What It Is & How It Works
Before we dive into our ecommerce personalization strategies, let’s understand what it is and how it works.
eCommerce personalization is the process of creating unique shopping experiences that cater specifically to your customers’ needs and wants. Instead of targeting your product offerings to the general audience, you will be focusing on tailoring your marketing efforts to appeal to specific, individual customers.
However, for eCommerce personalization to be effective, you need to make sure that every point of contact with your customer–starting from the moment they see an advertisement to when they complete their purchase on your Checkout page–is tailored to give them an unparalleled unique shopping experience.
Moreover, your eCommerce personalization efforts should give your customers such a satisfying experience that they feel inclined to return to your store in the future, and thus help you build a loyal customer base.
10 Interesting eCommerce Personalization Strategies To Boost Your Sales
Now here comes the big question: how do you come up with effective eCommerce personalization strategies that will make customers want to return to do business with you again?
The simple answer is that there are tons of ways you can personalize your marketing efforts to connect with your customers. Below, we have listed some of the most effective ones.
1. Attract Customers With Personalized Offers Based On Location
Knowing where most of your customers are located can help you understand their needs better. For instance, if you are running an online clothing store and you want to plan a special promotional campaign for Christmas, you can offer huge discounts on light, summer-wear clothes to customers located in Australia, since in Australia, Christmas is a summer holiday instead of a winter holiday.
You can easily do this by setting up dynamic geographical redirects, so that customers who visit your site from a particular location will be instantly sent to the landing page which is suitable for them.
2. Personalize The Homepage Of Your eCommerce store
The homepage of your online store is definitely one of the pages with the most traffic, which is why whenever you are running any promotion you should be displaying it on your homepage. However, you should also take care to personalize the homepage so that it is more relevant to your site visitors.
For instance, you can showcase a “Recommended Products” or “Bestselling Products” section that displays some of the most popular or highest selling products from the previous 24 hours, 7 days, etc.
In addition to this, you can also choose to display social proof notification alerts showing which products other customers in the same geolocation have purchased recently.
3. Show Continuous Shopping For Returning Customers
Several successful and large brands like Netflix and Spotify have already created “continuous watching” or “continuous listening” for their returning users, so that users can pick right up from where they left off.
Similarly, you can create a “continue shopping” experience for your customers so that they can return to browsing through the products they have been looking at when they visit your site again. You can do this by adding a “Continue Shopping” button to your Checkout page.
However, instead of taking the customers back to the homepage of your eCommerce store, clicking the button should take them to the specific product collection page, or the deal page they were browsing.
4. Promote Relevant Or Complimentary Products Before, During & After Checkout
You may already be aware of the concept of up-selling and cross-selling your products; they are some of the most effective ways to boost eCommerce sales.
Up-selling involves promoting products more expensive than what your customers have added to their cart, while cross-selling involves promoting products similar to what your customers have added to their cart irrespective of the price.
However, it is important to understand when these strategies are most effective. If you want to boost eCommerce sales, then you should display these product offerings during three key moments: before checkout, during checkout and after checkout.
This is an example of a very effective eCommerce personalization strategy that is used by most successful businesses around the world. However, once again the key here is to recommend products that you know will be relevant to the customers.
One example is how Amazon displays a “Top picks for you” section on their website during the checkout process.
5. Trigger Specific Popups Based On User Behavior
Popups have always been known to be effective in grabbing users’ attention and skyrocket conversions. However, if not done correctly, popups can feel intrusive to your potential customers and give them a negative shopping experience.
To avoid this mistake, you should trigger your popups to only display after specific user behavior such as the duration of the visitor’s session on your site, the value of products they have added to their cart, or their previous and real-time browsing behavior.
6. Reduce Cart Abandonment Rates With Personalized Emails
Cart abandonment can lead to huge losses for your eCommerce business if you do not have backup strategies to recover them. To reduce cart abandonment rates for your online store, you should send automated, personalized emails periodically to your customers. That way you may be able to engage with your customers, find out the root cause of cart abandonment and recover your sale.
7. Display User-Generated Content Across All Channels
User-generated content is one of the most important factors behind any customer’s purchase decision. These types of content include detailed product reviews, comments, video or image reviews of your products, and more.
With ReviewX, you can effortlessly collect high-quality, detailed and informative user-generated content for your WooCommerce products. However, to leverage these multi-criteria reviews and ratings, you should display them on your eCommerce site as well as on your other online platforms too.
For example, you can share your multi-criteria product reviews from customers on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and even include them in your blog posts, or email campaigns too when you are promoting a specific product.
8. Onboard Each New Customer Personally Through Email
In order to retain customers, you need to build relationships with them. And one effective way to do so is by onboarding each of your customers personally through emails. You can leverage the information customers have provided you with their consent to give them a unique experience.
The first email you send them should focus on introducing your business and your brand to your customers. A few days later, you may begin to send them emails about tailored product offerings based on the information they have provided. You should also send them emails requesting customer reviews so that you can find out if they are happy with your products or services.
9. Tailor Email Marketing Campaigns Based On Customer Segments
While we are on the subject of emails, let’s not forget one of the most important eCommerce personalization strategies. In order to retain your customers and form meaningful relationships with them, you should send out targeted emails based on specific customer segments. These segments could be based on geographical location, age, and more.
10. Use Chatbots To Boost Engagement With Customers
Finally, you can use chatbots to engage with your customers. It is to be expected that when a potential customer lands on your website for the first time, they may have several questions about your products or services. Using chatbots can help your customers find answers to their questions quickly and effortlessly while increasing your engagement rates.
Boost Your Customer Retention Rates With Effective eCommerce Personalization Strategies
With these effective eCommerce personalization strategies, you can easily engage with your site visitors and convert them into returning customers. For more strategies on how to build a loyal customer base, make sure to check out our detailed guide on best customer retention strategies.
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