Boost Your eCommerce Revenue Through Smart Personalization

Anita Sambol is a content strategist and graphic designer at Point Visible, a marketing agency providing custom blogger outreach services. She has years of experience in designing graphics for web and running social media and content marketing campaigns. She loves cooking and football.

Personalization and focusing your efforts on improving customer’s experience directly determine the ROI of your business. Ecommerce is an extremely competitive industry, so you should always strive for creative ways to increase your revenue and number of satisfied customers.

Online shoppers not only expect personalization, but they are more than willing to share their behavioral and personal data for a personalized shopping experience.

SalesForce study shows that 57% of users are willing to share their personal data for a personalized shopping experience. The same study shows an average revenue increase of 17% after implementing an email personalization into online shop.

Let’s learn more about personalization and its impact on crucial eCommerce metrics.

Importance of Personalization in eCommerce Marketing

A resourceful study points out that online retailers experienced a whopping 19% of sales growth after implementing personalization tactics.

Did you know that 96% of marketers agree that personalization is crucial for online retail success, but yet, more than 75% fail to implement personalization into their business model successfully? 

Let’s talk about increasing critical e-commerce metrics through personalization.

1) Decrease Bounce Rate Through Personalized Product Recommendations

Bounce rate indicates the number of visitors bounced from a specific page. Users mostly bounce because they didn’t find what they were looking for. 

Bounce rate is directly related to revenue, so reducing this metric is crucial for your business success. Keep your users on a specific page by giving them accurate information or products they’re looking for. 
Placing a promotional offer or recommended products on top of the homepage can drastically reduce bounce rate and increase conversion rate. Did you know that only 26% of users scroll through the lower parts of the homepage? 

Charlotte Russe followed the best practice by implementing a discounted offer on the top of their homepage, which definitely impacts the time users stay on a page, along with other essential metrics.

H&M personalizes a special offer by showing current trends in a specific location. For instance, they show a special beach clothing offer for its customers during the summer season in Croatia. 

2) Keep an Eye on Average Order Value (AOV)

Average order value (AOV) shows details about customer’s behavior and their spending habits. Metric shows the amount of money a single customer spends. 

Here are a few creative ways personalization can positively impact AOV:

• Personalized product recommendation  
• Minimum order amount with a discount
• Loyalty programs
• Product bundles with discounted price
• Recommend products based on user’s search history

Offering bundles does wonders when it comes to increasing the average order value. Instead of buying each product separately, Kids Racing created an option to buy a bundle with a discounted price.

3) Increase Conversion Rate Through Segmentation and Personalized Outreach

Low conversion rates can indicate that the user experience of your shop doesn’t satisfy the users, which makes them leave the shop without buying anything. Designing your online shop to provide users with a great experience is the key to high conversion rates. Not only you have to put enough effort into shop design, but also, give each user a personalized experience.

For instance, if users don’t instantly navigate products they’ve been looking for, not only your conversion rate will sink, but the bounce rate will raise too. Learning about the behavior of your customers will increase your conversion rate.

Here are a few proven tactics for increasing conversion rate:

• Limited offers to create a scarcity
• Engage with targeted customers through social channels
• Free or branded shipping
• Allow customer’s product feedback
• Personalized product recommendations through email
• Responsive customer support through live chat
• Use heatmap tools for placing CTA buttons
• Different offers for different segments

MailChimp is a perfect tool for creating segments and sending personalized emails based on segments. eCommerce360 plugin can segment users by a specific product they’ve previously purchased, so you can send them recommendations through email.

SkillShare sends you a personalized email with recommended courses after you sign up to their email list. They recommend specific courses based on the results of the survey you have to complete before signing to their email list. Also, they recommend specific courses based on your interests on the top of the homepage.

A practical approach to increase CTR is getting a heat map that shows the clicking habits of your users. We recommend using Crazy Egg, a tool that features a heat map and scroll map along with other valuable features. 

4) Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate Through Creating Urgency

Shopping cart abandonment indicates a lost opportunity. Did you know that 57% of users leave after adding products into a cart? 

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out why users leave a shop once they’ve already decided to add the products into a cart, but here are a few interesting numbers:

• 56% of users leave because of the unexpected cost that’s usually high shipping fee or tax
• 36% of users add the products in the cart to compare the prices 
• 25% of users leave because of non-intuitive navigation

Here are a few ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment rate through personalization:

• Follow up when someone abandons the cart
• Be sure your users aren’t surprised by hidden costs (shipping or taxes)
• Implement a wish list
• Create limited offers to increase the sense of urgency
• Create an intuitive checkout process

Once you add a product into your cart on Zappos online shop, you’re reminded “there are only 2 products left” which creates a sense of urgency. This tactic definitely helps in reducing the cart abandonment rate. 

EasyPopup is a tool that allows you to design catchy and personalized popups with a countdown which increases urgency.

Increase Your Revenue Through Personalization 

Personalization has never been so important in the e-commerce industry as nowadays. If you still haven’t implemented a personalization in your business, then you’re missing countless opportunities and losing valuable customers. Learn about customer’s behavior, get to know your users and provide them with a personalized shopping experience.