The organization of content and catalog is one of a store manager’s main obsessions, especially when the goal of increasing sales must be reconciled with protecting margins, thus avoiding excessive use of discounts and promotions.
Often we focus solely on increasing ecommerce turnover, neglecting how important it is to recognize the user by offering him a rewarding experience, precisely because it is personalized from the very first moment.Recognizing the user means being able to better target content already during the first visit to the home page and in subsequent visits, using the information that is already available to us.This is a choice that with obvious benefits for everyone: from the online experience of those who buy to the turnover of those who sell.Recognizing an ecommerce user, what the data say
According to Netretail research conducted by Netcomm in collaboration with Human Highway, four out of ten users come from search. It goes without saying that increasing the return on investment of these visits by offering content close to latent needs from the start is a first goal. Personalization begins with products featured on the home page to related articles but can also be pushed further, for example through messages on personalized pop-ups or offers reserved for the user that invite them to enter other areas of the site and then follow them throughout to complete the customer journey.
What can be customized? Practically everything, it just depends on the design strategy. Underlying it, however, must be the technological ability to handle data and analytics profitably. Let’s make a few cases of what we could customize to make user navigation more consistent with their interests and desires:
- Products on the home page, based on search keywords or based on products already purchased, but not limited to
- Navigation paths, through product recommendations similar to those you just viewed or based on the experience of similar users
- Messages that support navigation(behavioral messages) and invite action with upselling and cross-selling logic
- Specific discounts based both on the user’s segment, (new users vs. recurring customers etc.) and on logics more related to product characteristics, for example, discounting products with different margins or stocks differently from each other.
Optimizing promotional investment is not the only good reason why one should personalize the entire online experience. The other good reason is that users themselves reward content that is relevant and close to their interests, almost as if it were a must-have of the online purchase path.According to research conducted by PWC in 2015, personalization of the offer is one of the most expected features in both the web experience and the offer integrated with the physical store. This premise is very strong in the target audience of young people up to 34 years old, but we can consider it generalized globally and across almost all age segments.
Three good reasons why it is important to recognize users in an ecommerce Customizing the business proposition is one of the keys to success in ecommerce, recognizing users is one of the first steps in evolving a store from an online catalog to a real store, where people can find the same kind of sales assistance they are used to in the physical store. Here’s why:
- Improves the overall experience with the brand
The user can get a good feel for the brand, right from the first browsing sessions, because they immediately find what they are looking for. While this may seem obvious to a returning user, we often tend to underestimate its impact for the new user. You can also recognize anonymous browsing and start profiling potential customers not only on the keywords set in the search engine, but also with dynamic content based on external and internal site navigation.
- It is an opportunity to make proposals closer to the need of the moment and thus accelerate sales
The right product to the right person at the right time does not only apply to direct channels. By searching for something online, the user has already expressed a desire; by visiting certain pages, by dwelling on certain products, he is already telling us a lot about himself. Neglecting this strategic opportunity prevents you from beating the competition to the punch and being timely in the attention market.
- In the aftermarket, it is a key retention vector
The lack of personalization is experienced as frustrating and becomes a point of weakness for Customer Life Time Value. The user, returning to your site, greatly appreciates being recognized; this is the same psychological mechanism of reassurance that is triggered by the sales assistant in a physical store. Therefore, your ability to suggest interesting products or services to them will be rewarded in terms of loyalty and increased average receipt.
Recognize and then personalize, where do you start? As we have seen, users are not all the same and so must be the content you offer but also the type of solicitation they receive. To meet this challenge, personalization must necessarily be automated, the broader and deeper the product catalog. Otherwise, manual personalization results in an unsustainable cost, as well as not being able to technically achieve the same results as automation.Therefore, a method for personalization must be identified:
- COLLECTING DATFirstcheck the data available to you. Can you recognize the users? Based on what technology? (database, cookies, fingerprints, CRM). Can you integrate all the information with each other?
- IPOTIZINGSEGMENTSIt is critical to leverage profiling to build dynamic segments that create a diverse experience by user type. Who are your customers? What kind of behaviors have you recorded? Try dividing your audiences into small, meaningful groups.
- UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER JOURNEYChatdoes the user expect after a certain action? What needs can you anticipate? If they search or browse for a certain product, what kind of business experience can you offer? Starting with the segments you can design a story for each user.
- MAPPING THE CHANNELS AVAILABLETo knowthe user means to offer him the right thing, at the right time not only while he is browsing, but also when he has left the ecommerce. When is it good to set up custom automation? In what mode? pop, up, email, sms, social, etc.?
- VERIFYING Hypotheses As always, every hypothesis must be tested, and the successful ones must take the place of the less performing ones. With this in mind, it is also desirable to do A/B testing, so that you can test and optimize the performance of your ecommerce in real time, all to the benefit of a better experience with your brand.
In the next post we will explore some ideas to begin thinking about the first two points, from data analysis to creating valuable segments.
