Shopping experiences are extremely important nowadys. Do you think your brand is meeting all customers’ expectations? As a small brand, you may believe daily customer engagement is enough to consider yourself a brand with a personalised touch, but there is more to it. If you offer a one-size-fits-all interaction, you may lose many potential customers.
In today’s shopping world, customers expect great experience and personalisation. Your business can no longer go on without personalisation because this element can affect almost every aspect of your business, from revenue to brand loyalty.
To be able to talk more about how best to create a personalised shopping experience for your customers, we first need to understand what personalisation is. So, let’s find it out.
What is shopping experience personalisation in e-commerce exactly?
Personalisation is a process that makes a custom shopping experience for each customer. This is done with the help of customers’ data.
You can personalise your e-commerce store by using this data to divide customers and show them all the relevant products/services in your store. Similarly, you can showcase product recommendations based on customers’ previous purchases.
Then, you can continue using automated email campaigns based on customer behaviour, just as you can design a personalised home page for each customer.
In the fashion industry, personalization can be a huge advantage. Creating a personalised shopping experience in your online fashion store and implementing software like Unmade can be a great business move.
What are the benefits of shopping experience personalisation?
As mentioned, personalisation can affect everything from revenue to brand loyalty. An increase in revenue is precisely one of the greatest benefits of implementing personalisation in customers’ shopping experiences.
Many e-commerce stores implementing personalisation have noticed that customers spend more time and money on their sites. This makes sense. If the e-commerce store is set to cater to your needs, you will make the most of it.
In addition to increased revenue, personalisation can also improve your customer loyalty. Customers will always return to where they’ve had a personalised and positive experience.
Customer satisfaction is also going to skyrocket once you implement personalisation. Customers prefer to see personalised products/services as they are believed to be more valuable and more to the customers’ taste. With the personalisation in place, you can also expect recommendations and high ratings.
But that’s not all. Personalised products/services are often believed to be of higher quality which can lead to the above-mentioned increase in sales.
Of course, there are other benefits, but these were some of the greatest ones. Now, let’s see how you can create a personalised shopping experience for your customers.
How to personalise the shopping experience for your business
Gather and analyze customer data
Before implementing personalization, you need to gather some data from your customers. This data includes purchase history, browsing history, search queries, demographics, etc. You can easily do this through surveys, feedback forms, cookies, and user accounts.
After you’ve gathered all the information you need, you can now start analysing it. Analysing customer data with the help of different techniques will help you find customer patterns and preferences. From there, you can start segmenting customers.
Customer segmentation
Further dividing customers into groups will help you better understand them and their needs. There are 4 kinds of segmentation, and they include demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioural segmentation.
Demographic segmentation will tell you exactly who your customers are. This means you’ll be able to gather more information about your customers’ age, gender, status, occupation, and education.
Geographic segmentation will tell you which part of the world your customers come from. Psychographic segmentation, on the other hand, will help you meet your customers better. You’ll be able to discover their personalities, lifestyles, values, and beliefs.
The last segmentation is behavioural, and here you will gather data connected to sales, purchase patterns, brand awareness, and so on.
Define buyer personas
All the data and information you’ve gathered from the previous two steps will help you create buyer personas. You can create buyer personas based on your customers’ motivations and trends.
This is where surveys, product reviews, and social media interactions can be useful. You can use what you’ve learned from that data to create buyer personas; you can even use customers’ opinions and words.
Personalize product recommendations
These buyer personas will help you create and personalise products and product recommendations. If the customer returns to your store, information such as purchase history, geographic location, age, and other past data will help create a personalised product recommendation list.
If the customer is a first-time customer, things can get tricky because you don’t have any previous data on this particular customer. If this is the case, the first-time customer will be targeted with a list of best-selling products/services.
Focus on first-time customers
Now that we mentioned first-time customers, we need to say more about them. With today’s technology, it’s not difficult to identify and sort new customers.
Once they make their first purchase, you can send them an automated, personalised email. In this email, you can thank them for purchasing on your site. You can even offer them a discount code they can use in your store.
This email will make new customers feel noticed and appreciated, enticing them to buy from you again.
Personalise marketing strategy
In addition to personalised emails, you can further personalise your marketing strategy. This means that personalisation isn’t just about making purchases but can also be integrated into your marketing strategy.
Email campaigns are a good start, but you can also try social media campaigns, ads, and other similar campaigns. The whole point of personalised marketing is to create brand awareness.
So, don’t spare any money and time on creating high-quality personalised content and loyalty programs, discounts, coupons, and similar offers that will entice customers to buy from you.
We can gather from all of this that personalisation is no longer an option but a necessity. If you want your business to thrive, you need to personalise the shopping experience for your customers.
And now that you know how it’s done, you don’t have to wait any longer. Personalise your customers’ shopping experience and increase their shopping satisfaction in your store.
