Online shoppers nowadays are spoilt with choice. With no shortage of e-commerce sites to choose from, your virtual patrons will expect nothing short of an exceptional experience when shopping on your website. This is where personalisation will help you stand out. But what exactly is e-commerce personalization?
Imagine entering a shop and the employees are immediately able to provide you with tasteful recommendations based on your preferences, environment, and prior purchases. An entire store catering to you would probably feel like exclusive treatment. This is what e-commerce personalisation is, except in a virtual sense. Rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach to e-commerce, retailers can ensure each individual has an enhanced shopping experience. Providing customers with a memorable and comfortable shopping experience on your site will lead to loyal customers and higher conversion rates. Retailers have reported a 20% increase in sales after implementing personalized features.
To give you a clearer picture of what e-commerce personalization is, here are just a few examples of effective personalization features on e-commerce sites.
- Product Recommendations (Zalora)
On the Zalora website, customers will be shown clothing recommendations based on previously viewed items below. Showing items that are similar or related to previously viewed products can help improve the likelihood of purchasing as it can help customers find products of interest.
- Abandoned Cart Emails (Amazon)
When customers put something in their carts without proceeding with a purchase, Amazon will send out emails to remind them of these items. A customer may have hesitated, been distracted, or still contemplating a purchase, and these emails may just prompt them to proceed with the transaction.
- Geolocation Functions (Shopee)
Shopee uses the customers’ locations to provide a shipping fee estimate, which provides convenience and ease to shoppers, increasing the likelihood of them returning to Shopee for future purchases.
- Chatbots (AirAsia)
AirAsia allows customers to personalize their requests by providing them with ‘AVA’, a virtual assistant that can provide page visitors with useful information in addition to helping customers complete purchases by providing instructions to book flights or hotels, then redirecting them to the relevant webpages. This will help potential customers navigate the site to make purchases.