Personalization Archives - Galaxy Weblinks

Hello (Inserts your First name),

All of us have received emails/ sms notifications, social media ads, that are sharing offers and discounts on the products that we have been eyeing.

Hyper personalization takes the basic information as the starting point of its research and then gets to know you better with the help of Artificial Intelligence or AI. It collects real time information, identifies patterns, looks for reasons behind actions performed (via feedback) and then serves product recommendations, content and offers based on analysis carried out.

Understanding Hyper-Personalization

Is hyper-personalization a new concept? Not really. Hyper-personalization is like those regular personal conversations you have in your neighborhood Mom and Pop stores. You wouldn’t think of going to another shop for your grocery shopping as you know the owners well and they know your preferences, thereby assisting you in finding your favorites without even asking.

Hyper personalization is aimed at establishing the same relationship with your customers but virtually and on a wider scale. AI and Machine Learning advancements have made hyper personalization a reality now. You can now leverage these technologies to build a customer experience that leaves behind a good imprint in your users’ minds.

Consumers want businesses to understand their needs

Your customers are always in a time crunch, but also have a sizable disposable income to indulge in luxuries. They will certainly appreciate tailor-made recommendations right in their mailbox or while browsing your website. In case you still have doubts, have a look at these numbers –

A study conducted by Accenture said that 41% of US consumers changed their brand preferences because of a lack of personalization and trust.
In the same study, 81% of customers wished that brands put in more effort to understand them better.
Customers now expect brands to understand their dynamic needs and respond as per the insights garnered from the real time data they collect.

Hyper-personalize your ecommerce business

Hyper-personalization revolves around AI, Machine Learning and Deep learning, social media research, surveys, and website analytics. AI and Big data usage are spread across industries. It is used by Netflix, Starbucks, Stitch Fix, Amazon, and many others.

Amazon uses data from every possible place. Be it purchase history, viewing history, saved items, average time spent on search, and shopping cart data. It also features a frequently bought together category for further assistance to customers. All this information is used to personalize the search query and even the homepage for the visitors, via predictive analysis method.

Another example is Stitch Fix. It is an online personal styling venture.

As users sign up, they are asked questions about their styling preferences, which are then matched to the numerous stylists’ profiles on the website.
These stylists then handpick relevant products for the users and the user has to select one product out of the curated range and pay for it.
Feedback is requested from the customers for the products they keep, as well as return, which is then used for future recommendations.

Stitch Fix combines human and data insights to deliver maximum customizations to their customers.

In essence, collecting, combining and analyzing all the data collected will help you in building a hyper personalized experience for all your customers. We recommend that you categorize the data into micro segments. This ensures that the results, preferences and content shown is always relevant to the customers.

Mass marketing and macro segmentation fail because of heavy generalization. For example, as a clothing ecommerce platform, if you are targeting all your female customer base at once, you forget to customize as per the geographic conditions, age group, body structure and even color preferences.

Whereas if you go for micro segmentation, you can send some bright color options to your younger demographic as they are more inclined towards experimentation and are yet to discover the color that suits them vis-a-vis the older demographic.

Leverage social media to find insights into your customer needs and wants; what your competitors are doing, and keep a track of all the trends. This always comes in handy when curating content for emails, blogs, social media accounts and newsletters.

Scope of Hyper-Personalization

Every page, recommendation, content, promotions can be a part of hyper-personalization. You can start by customizing the homepage of your website.

Your search function should take into consideration any keywords used by your visitor, previous queries, buying behavior, etc for saving your customer’s time. The likeliness of conversion increase when you quickly address your customer’s query.

Product recommendations bundled with complementary product offerings are a great way to increase your sales. It’s like when you order a burger and fries at McDonald’s and the cashier asks if you would like to make it a meal with a beverage. Only a few of us can resist such an offer! Add-Ons or similar product offerings under the ‘you may like this as well’ section comes across as thoughtful suggestions and not a pushy sales tactic.

Some takeaways

Send emails at the most optimal time for maximum engagement.
Take the geographic conditions in mind when sending product and service catalogs.
Personalized discounts and offers on the categories that your customer visited the most or has saved it or based on the purchase history will increase your sales conversion rate.

Hyper-personalization is not just an option! It is essential to survive in this harshly competitive online commerce space. Not only will it help you provide a frictionless experience to your customers, but it will also help you build a loyal and strong customer base. Your customers will turn into your brand advocates for all your potential customers.

Feel free to contact our experts who will assist you in building a better customer experience for your ecommerce venture.

About the Author

Vinod Khajja is an Ecommerce expert at Galaxy. He is a firm believer of AI and it’s possibilities with Ecommerce. As a Senior Project Manager he has multiple ecommerce successes under his belt.

With most shopping happening online, the consumer purchasing behaviour has seen a paradigm shift. Earlier the options were limited and buying decisions were quick but now consumers have to sift through a ton of choices to get to what they’re looking for. Just like people trying to hear through a cloud of noise.

For instance, try calling people by their names in large and crowded places. No matter how loud the party gets, the right person or people will turn back. Years of evolution have helped us develop selective hearing. The internet is the same crowded place where everyone is trying to get your attention.

But somehow out of all the products and promotional campaigns, some cut through the noise and make you feel like they were made for you. It’s because they gave a personal touch to their campaigns or their websites.

Accenture, an MNC, found in a research that personalization is key to the success of an e-commerce store.

The results revealed some information that was against what is commonly believed in regards to consumers and their data.

56% of consumers get carried away with the store’s personalization when the store recognizes them with a name.

65% of them prefer retailers that know their buying history. Only if the data is used to provide tailored recommendations.

58% of them buy products from the recommended section provided by the e-commerce store.

In exchange for these, 86% of consumers are willing to share data for getting a personalized experience.

In a world of information overload, personalization is a godsent feature. Here are some personalization strategies which you can adopt for your eCommerce store.

1. Personalize your Homepage

In real world, the homepage of your website would be the entrance to your brick and mortar store. When a potential customer comes at the doorstep of your shop, you must provide the ultimate user experience by greeting them in the best possible way.

Homepage personalization is one of the important keys to do that.

Unlike real stores, online stores can leverage data to know the preferences of a customer on their first visit. From here on Cookies store relevant information to help you tailor the user experience for their next visits.

Amazon, targets every single individual via personalization. Whenever a user selects a particular category to browse more, they get redirected to the same page in the next visits.

2. Location-based personalization

It’s easy to customize products based on location as it improves the shopping experience. It even helps to display campaigns based on the user’s location.

Most e-commerce sites know where the user is coming from and where they want their products to get shipped. They use this valuable information to get more accurate results.

Here is an example of a Butterfly twist that lets its users get the look and feel as if they are shopping at some native place.

Butterfly twists pull the IP address of the users and personalise product page according to the location. For example if your user is from America, it will set the default page to American sizes and currency.

There is a limitation to this practice. Companies must not force customers to view products on a country-specific site. As a user, it gets really annoying when the website keeps redirecting when you’ve specifically chosen to explore a different location than your own.

Websites need to understand that people are not always buying for themselves and they can choose to explore some other regions, otherwise what’s the point of the Internet.

3. Integrate User-Generated content

User-generated content is another dimension for increasing sales on an e-commerce store.It gives customers a chance to review the details of the product before making final payment.

User review screenshot of an ecommerce website

Yotpo’s benchmark study found that on an average conversion rate of the customers who saw UGC is 166% times higher than those who don’t.

Campus protein uses the UGC on the website so that users can add ratings to the entire product catalog. It even displays the carousel of Instagram inspired UGC at the bottom of the site to reveal the user’s likes and dislikes for the products.

4. Create an array of recently viewed items

Generally, most of the users browse through a company’s site to see the products that are in trend.

Although users trust their memory, they still fail to recall all the products they saw the day before. This is why they look for some sort of help from the store.

Adidas website screenshot of recently viewed items

Adidas wins an impressive score in recommending products and creating awareness. It uses attribute based and collaborative filtering to convert customers and help them select the right running shoe.

5. Reaffirm user choices with Social Proof notifications

It’s a new way to personalize your e-commerce store. It helps you send real time notifications and other relevant updates to your customers.

Many organizations are using this technology to provide relevant and contextual information about the product and the company.

McDonald’s have been using a similar strategy to boost conversions for years. It updates its website’s marquee to show how many people they have served till date. This strategy attracts potential customers towards the quality brand trusted by millions of people. It is not a real time notification variety but it achieves the same goal.

6. Create urgency with timed social retargeting

It is often seen that if a customer doesn’t like the products or is not willing to purchase anything, they leave the site or else jump to another one. It gets difficult to retain them once they bounce to find better options.

In such scenarios, social retargeting helps promote products wisely. Spending on customers who are less likely to buy is like wasting resources. Thus, companies must select their target after thorough analysis.

e-bag is a perfect example of social retargeting. It uses this concept to offer ideas for the backpacks through retargeted ads to all those who have seen or viewed the products before.

7. Help them with style guides or assistants

In addition to UGC, almost every shopper needs a personal assistant to take them to the best match for their taste. But it would probably break the bank. Moreover, it’s not possible with an e-commerce site.

But onsite assistance with quizzes and style guides can do the needful. It would help them to make better buying decisions. This is what e-commerce stores are doing.

E-commerce stores are creating a personalised wardrobe for every user who answers questions related to taste, choice, style and budget. The best thing about it is that it regularly updates the user’s wardrobe with new products and informs them about it through mails.

Shein went a step ahead in personalized recommendations. This step does more than offering a size chart. It helps users discover new products and styles. They even feature live shows where stylists come and talk about the attire they are wearing. It helps users to get to know about the product which they are thinking of buying.

Wrap up

Aligning all the above mentioned strategies on your ecommerce store can help you to:-

Reduce friction
Increase engagement
Retain customers
Boost conversions

After reading something just as this piece might motivate you to redesign your website but adding small but useful elements wherever possible will work just as efficiently as possible. It will help you in enhancing customer shopping experience on a large scale.

If you’re thinking of getting the max out of your product promotions and customer visits and don’t know where to start then get in touch with our e-commerce experts here.

Category: Personalization

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