The effect of the personalized approach in online retail is really astonishing. 63% of US marketers in the survey by Statista named the growth of conversions as the main beneficial result of personalization strategies. 31% pointed out the revenue increase as the most important outcome. Moreover, one-third of marketing specialists spend more than 50% of their available budgets on efforts to make their interconnections with customers as individual as possible.

Let’s discuss 5 advanced and proven steps you can take in this direction: smart product recommendations, email send-outs, product builders, push notifications, and AI-based online assistants.

1. Product Customizers

The highest level of personalization is when you allow users to create their own pieces. Many brands actively offer this possibility to their customers, and some even made such a feature an integral part of their concepts.

The good news is that the idea of customization is widely applicable. Footwear, clothing, furniture, accessories, stationery manufacturers, and other brands implement product builders and ensure visitors that the perfect item will be found.

Take a look at the screenshot below from the website of a footwear brand Girotti. This business is focused on manufacturing bespoke custom shoes, and even their motto “One and only” invites you to try their customizer. As we see, the functionality is impressively rich: you can choose materials and colors of different shoe parts, the style of your pair, soles, and some extra décor. Handy prompts facilitate navigation, whereas a 360-degree view helps to estimate the choice of elements and colors from every angle.

The only noticeable and potentially harmful moment for the website’s conversions is the performance and speed issues. Customizers are complex and powerful tools that require corresponding parameters of the site. In cases like this, we’d recommend considering Magento PWA development if your online store is based on Magento. Rebuilding your site as a progressive web app will substantially enhance its performance, speed, navigation, and KPIs, as well as UX/UI on mobile and desktop versions simultaneously.

2. Smart Product Recommendations

This is the most popular means of personalization: 46% of the UK and US markers propose their customers individually selected items. And that’s reasonable because this approach favorably affects essential KPIs like the click-through rate, conversion rate, revenue per visitor, and more.

Nowadays, such possibilities are usually powered by AI. Machine learning allows offering more relevant goods for a particular user based on their browsing and purchase history as well as the items in abandoned carts. Algorithms instantly react to changes in customer behavior and suggest new products in line with their interests.

In the screenshot below from NET-A-PORTE, you’ll see how it works. I was looking for a handbag of a particular style: small, with an unusual shape and bright color. As a result, in the “You may also like” section I saw a couple of purses that I marked as favorites earlier, and other ones that fitted my taste and desire. With this option, chances to sell at least something to a user only increase.

3. Email Send-outs

About 77% of digital marketers use personalization in email marketing. Besides mentioning the name of the receiver and writing more original subject lines, you must change the content so that it matches the preferences and behavior of every customer on your website.

Again, artificial intelligence is a great helper in providing customers with precisely targeted messages. Analyzing large amounts of data about last viewed goods, favorites, and unfinished orders, algorithms allow to create genuinely personal letters with appealing offerings. Cross-selling and up-selling emails of this kind are much more likely to engage clients and encourage them to purchase something.

Moreover, as AI learns all the time it can become highly predictive. As a consequence, it will then recommend some items that can be liked by a particular user. In the screenshot below, we can see what FARFETCH sent me recently “to match my style”. Hmm, I like it!

One more little but worthwhile idea to implement: track abandoned carts and set up automated email send-outs with goods that were left by customers.

4. Push Notifications

One more wholesome feature that can be successfully leveraged by marketers is push notifications. For instance, when an item from a wish list of a particular customer goes cheaper or returns to stock, people will be happy to know it straight away and make a purchase first.

In the meantime, avoid sending annoying, irrelevant, and non-personalized push notifications like the one in the screenshot below. AliExpress cheated in order to re-engage me: they’ve promised to show me an item that I once saved, with a discount. But, when I tapped this message, I was redirected to the catalog of “flash deals”, not to a specific product page. All I want to do now is to turn off notifications from their app!

Bear in mind the stats: approximately 90% of users consider irrelevant marketing messages irritating. About half that number of respondents underlined that they are ready to turn to brands that do personification better.

5. AI-powered Chatbots

As you see, you can’t ignore artificial intelligence anymore as AI and chatbots, in particular, are amongst the hottest trends in digital marketing in recent years. You can reach an outstanding level of personalization using this ever-developing technology. For instance, chatbots can ameliorate your customer service.

Take a look at the screenshot below from Levi’s. Once you’ve landed on the website, you’re greeted by Indigo. The chatbot is designed to help you with the most frequent inquiries: it shows promotions, gets you acquainted with a catalog and navigation features, or switches you to the live agent. Such assistants facilitate the customer’s journey, can operate 24/7, and rescue human support teams from wasting time on simple questions.

To Conclude

The matter of personalization is steadily becoming essential for each eCommerce business that counts on customers’ loyalty, a higher conversion rate, and better financial gain. Fortunately, the level of technologies behind online retail and digital marketing is evolving by leaps and bounds. Being used smartly and respectfully towards clients, such tools and approaches ensure the success of your online store.