Ecommerce Personalisation: What is it and How to Get it Right

Callum McKeefery

January 17, 2022

4 min read

The buyer journey is everything in ecommerce. Providing a well crafted customer experience is key to engagement, conversion and loyalty - and to get it right, you need to harness the power of data for both on and off site personalisation.

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So what exactly are we talking about when we say ‘ecommerce personalisation’? One thing’s for sure. We’re not talking about ‘creepy’, poorly deployed retargeting ads. Nor are we talking about outdated and oversimplified tactics - like pulling a customer’s first name into a generic marketing email, or vaguely segmenting your audience based on demographics alone.

We’re referring to something far more sophisticated: the real time use of both demographic and behavioural data to create a unique, seamless experience for every customer. An experience that anticipates their needs, offers relevant content, and keeps them coming back for more.

And it works. A solid personalisation strategy brings an increase in sales, higher AOV, and more repeat custom. For context:

80% of consumers say they’re more likely to buy from merchants that treat them as individuals
44% of shoppers say they’d make a repeat purchase from a merchant that offers a personalised experience.
Specific to retail, personalisation has been found to boost revenue by 10% to 30%.

So what tactics should you be using, and how do you make the most of the data available to you? To answer this, let's look at PureClarity - a personalisation platform that uses big data and machine learning to tailor each buyer experience.

How do Personalisation Platforms work?

Personalisation Platform we've recently been working with, PureClarity uses AI to collect data on every visitor to your store - how they found you, where they’re located, the actions they took on-site, how they interact with you off-site etc. It uses this detail to build a picture of individual customers and treat them as such, creating an on-site experience based on their likes, dislikes, and past behaviours.

Here’s some of the key tactics you can employ in your personalisation strategy‍

Personalised content
Banners, carousels, modal pop-ups, choose what you want each customer to see on-site based on their data. For example, a discount code pop-up for first time purchases, or a sales banner specific to a customer's search history. ‍

Product recommendations
Boost conversion and AOV using the advanced recommender engine. This allows you to up-sell and cross-sell products relevant to a customers on-site behaviour and past purchase history. It’s all automated, and you can set parameters for recommendations based on your business needs.‍

Personalisation in Search
‍Anticipate customer needs by providing personalised recommendations and content within search results. Highlight products you know they’ll love above main search results, offer recommendations based on buying behaviours, and encourage conversion with promotional search banners.

Essentially, what an ecommerce personalisation platform like PureClarity allows you to do is to utilise dynamic content, special offers, and recommendations that a customer will relate to, keeping them on-site for longer, more likely to make a purchase, and more likely to return in future.

But eCommerce personalisation doesn't end there. It needs to continue throughout the whole customer lifecycle, and should extend to your email marketing campaigns. To facilitate this, you should look to build a best-of-breed tech stack where all solutions integrate seamlessly and data is shared across the board.

For example, by using ecommerce personalisation in conjunction with an ESP like Klaviyo, you can add dynamic recommendations to your campaigns. And if you bring a platform like REVIEWS.io into the mix too, you can take your personalisation efforts even further.

How to Elevate Personalisation with Review Content

Use Review Attributes

In ecommerce, using review attributes to capture product insights is critical to providing a more personal shopping experience. Attributes allow customers to describe product specifics in relation to themselves - for example, the length of a product based on their height, or the shape according to their body type.

What this gives someone browsing that product is information they can relate to - it’s a personal touch that’s all too often missing in online retail, and MAAP makes great use of this as part of a personalisation strategy.

Offer Authenticity with UGC

Here we’re talking about photo and video reviews. Granted, publication of UGC might not class as a personalisation tactic as such, but it goes a long way towards creating a personal connection.

Instead of simply reading written reviews and product descriptions, consumers can experience a product vicariously. They can imagine how it will fit into their own life, because they can see it in someone else’s. And that makes the whole buying experience feel more relevant to them.

Translate Review Content

Geo-targeting is another major aspect of personalisation, and this should apply to your review content. If you have an international audience, everyone that enters your site should be given access to genuine customer feedback in their preferred language.

You can make review content multilingual with our Weglot integration, building deeper connections with customers no matter their location.

Use Flow for Email Personalisation

Continue the unique experience post purchase and accelerate review collection with flow sequences. Our email automation tool, Flow, allows you to set sending conditions based on things like geolocation and products purchased.

You can also tailor emails based on recipient actions, for example, requesting video content from anyone that’s left a 5* review, or providing support information for an unhappy customer.

And again, just like PureClarity, we integrate fully with ESPs like Klaviyo, so you can maintain those personal relationships with email campaigns intelligently designed around customer data.

Want to find out more information? Check out our demo video!