What is E-Commerce Personalisation?
E-Commerce personalisation is the process of creating personalised experiences, interactions and content for current and potential customers.
E-Commerce personalisation covers a variety of practices which can either be taken on-site or through marketing channels such as email.
The Importance of E-Commerce Personalisation
In today’s modern world, consumers are inundated with choice when it comes to making purchase decisions online. Not only do E-Commerce stores face stiff competition from large incumbents but with platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce making it simple to create an online store, the number of E-Commerce stores is growing exponentially.
With all this competition, setting yourself apart as an E-Commerce store is becoming harder and harder. Gone are the days where a Facebook campaign can generate considerable ROI. Facebook ads are getting more expensive at the same time as being less effective.
So what can you do to set yourself apart from the competition?
The answer is simple. Build a strong brand and superior customer experience through personalisation.
The facts don’t lie. 80% of consumers say that they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalised experiences.
And it’s not just experiences that matter to consumers. According to Accenture, 91% of consumers are likely to buy from companies who remember them and provide relevant offers. A further 83% are willing to share their data in exchange for personalised experiences.
So, it’s pretty clear that personalisation has a big impact on consumers' perception of an E-Commerce store and more importantly their willingness to buy from an E-Commerce store.
E-Commerce stores should be providing personalised experiences and offers as part of their integrated marketing strategy. This means personalising everything from website content to E-Mail marketing campaigns.
How to Optimise Your E-Commerce Personalisation Strategy
1. Know Your Users
Knowing your users is the fundamental aspect of optimising your E-Commerce store towards personalisation. It’s common sense. The more you know about your customers, the more you are equipped to personalise your content towards them.
So what do you want to know about your customers?
Well ideally you want to know as much as possible. But, you don’t want to be trying to personalise everything all at once. This will make it difficult to learn what’s working and what’s not.
So, pick one strategy, learn everything you can about your users to optimise that personalisation strategy and then move on to the next.
Personalising your social media may be a good place to start. Don’t think that it is okay to always repurpose content across all your social media channels. Of course, in some cases, this is okay. But, people using Twitter may want completely different content to those using Instagram. Find out what type of content resonates most with each of your social media channels.
If you want to personalise your email marketing strategy then find out what type of content your customers want to see in their inbox. Is it discounts and promotions? Is it content with your industry? Is it an update on your company? Is it all of the above? Find out what type of content they want and then importantly the frequency at which they want it.
Personalising your store itself can take many forms. You may want to personalise a homepage. For this utilise cookies to track what a user is interested in and then optimise their homepage for this interest on their next visit. You can also do things such as displaying users recently viewed items or displaying recommendations of products that go with what they are browsing. For this you want to know how your users are interacting with your website and personalise it based on their interactions.
2. Segment Your Audience
Personalisation is made much more powerful when you are able to segment your audience. You may be finding interests about your users as a whole that means personalisation tactics may please most but may alienate some.
By segmenting your audience, you are creating a more personalised experience that is greater tailored to your audience’s needs.
You want to group customers with similar needs together and provide them with the experiences they are looking for.
For segmentation strategies, you want to follow the same personalisation strategies but segment them to particular audiences.
For example, with email marketing you may find out that older demographics care more about hearing more about your brand or industry updates. You may find younger audiences mainly care about promotional offers. Therefore you can segment older and younger audiences and send them emails that fit their interests.
Similarly, you may segment your ad campaigns. This is especially true with social media advertising. But, you can go a step further by creating personalised homepages based on what campaign brought a user to your website.
Conclusion
In conclusion, to gain a competitive edge in today's E-Commerce landscape, personalisation is a must. Personalisation can be done in many ways - through social media, email marketing, store customisations are the main things a store should focus on.
What's important in all types of personalisation is knowing your customer. If you don't have a thorough understanding of your customer then your personalisation efforts will be in vain.
If you can gain a deep understanding of your customer base, you can increase the effectiveness of personalisation campaigns through the segmentation of your audience.
If you want to find out more about how Bazar helps our clients get to know their customers better and how these insights can be used to help your personalisation strategy, contact us here.
