Customers expect a personalized, tailored shopping journey from the moment they hit your site. They want you to understand their preferences and needs.
And brands that deliver on that expectation are absolutely crushing it. Personalization is a huge competitive advantage that boosts engagement, conversions, and loyalty.
Over the next few sections, I’ll break down 4 powerful personalization tactics every ecommerce brand should be leveraging:
- Product recommendations
- Search personalization
- Homepage/navigation personalization
- Outfit recommendations
You’ll learn exactly what these tactics are and get strategies for implementing them yourself.
No more generic, one-size-fits-all ecommerce experiences. It’s time to create tailored shopping journeys that turn customers into raving fans.
Let’s dive in.
Product Recommendations
This one’s probably the most familiar form of ecommerce personalization. Product recommendations use data on a customer’s purchase history, browsing behavior, demographics, and more to surface hyper-relevant product picks just for them.
These “you might also like” or “complete the look” recommendations can appear on product pages, in the shopping cart, through emails, and beyond. The possibilities are endless.
Amazon is the master of recommendation personalization. Their sophisticated algorithms drive an estimated 35% of their revenue from personalized product recommendations.
But you see it everywhere from Target to Sephora to Nordstrom. And for good reason – personalized recommendations increase engagement, average order values, conversions, you name it.
If you’re not leveraging recommendation personalization yet, you’re straight-up leaving money on the table. It’s one of the most powerful ecommerce personalization tactics and a total must-have.
Search Personalization
For customers, finding what they want quickly is key to a great shopping experience. That’s where search personalization comes in.
Instead of showing the same generic search results to every visitor, personalized search tailors the results to each user’s interests and preferences. It’s like having a personal shopping assistant.
Search personalization can also include intelligent autosuggest recommendations as someone types their query, guiding them toward relevant products.
Best Buy does this well, with personalized search results and autosuggest pulling from a customer’s purchase history and saved preferences.
Home Depot takes it a step further, personalizing search filters and sort orders too.
By removing the guesswork from search, this tactic reduces bounce rates, increases conversions, and creates a frictionless path to purchase. It’s personalization gold.
Homepage and Navigation
The homepage and site navigation are the gateways to your entire ecommerce experience. So why serve up a generic, one-size-fits-all version?
With personalization, you can dynamically tailor the homepage hero, product merchandising, category listings, and more to each visitor based on their data and behavior.
Sephora is an ecommerce personalization master here. Their homepage and navigation are completely personalized based on purchase history, product views, beauty preferences, and more.
Nike does it too, with a personalized “Recommended For You” section on their homepage driving engagement.
This tactic removes friction and guides customers directly to the most relevant areas and products for them. It’s like a personal shopping concierge.
When you nail homepage and navigation personalization, you create a smooth, tailored journey from the second someone lands on your site.
Outfit Recommendations
For fashion and apparel brands, personalized outfit recommendations are where it’s at. Using data on customers’ purchase history, style preferences, and more, you can surface complete, tailored outfit suggestions.
These hyper-relevant outfit picks make it easy for shoppers to discover new styles they’ll love without the overwhelm of endless product grids.
You can take it a step further with lifestyle or occasion-based recommendations too – like “date night outfits” or “work looks.”
Rent the Runway and Stitch Fix have built multi-billion dollar businesses on these personalized outfit recommendations.
But you see it from Anthropologie to Everlane to Nordstrom too. It’s a powerful way to increase average order values while creating a guided, customized shopping experience.
For fashion ecommerce, personalized outfit recommendations are an absolute must. They drive serious revenue and loyalty.
Data and Technology Requirements
Of course, all this ecommerce personalization isn’t possible without the right data and tools. You need a solid foundation in place first.
On the data side, you’ll want to collect and unify customer information from every touchpoint – website behavior, purchases, demographics, preferences, you name it. Building unified customer profiles is key.
From there, you need tools with machine learning and AI capabilities to actually analyze that data and surface intelligent personalization. Many ecommerce platforms and personalization vendors offer this functionality.
You’re also going to want a best-in-class product discovery solution to power personalized search and recommendations.
Having the right personalization technology stack is crucial. Without it, you’re just guessing instead of leveraging real customer insights.
Get the data and tools dialed first, then you can implement personalization tactics effectively.
Testing and Optimizing
Implementing personalization isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it situation. You need to continuously test and optimize to maximize its impact.
Run A/B tests to determine which personalization tactics and placements resonate most with your audience. Test different recommendation strategies, product badging, you name it.
For example, you could pit collaborative filtering recommendations against those based on viewing data to see which drive more conversions.
Or test personalizing your homepage hero versus not personalizing it at all. Let the data decide what works.
The key is to keep iterating based on those test results. Double down on winning personalization approaches while sunsetting underperformers.
Personalization is an ongoing effort, not a one-and-done project. But consistent optimization pays off in serious revenue gains.
Conclusion
There you have it – four powerful ecommerce personalization tactics to level up your customer experience and sales:
- Product recommendations that surface hyper-relevant items
- Search personalization for a frictionless shopping journey
- Dynamic homepage and navigation personalization
- Tailored outfit recommendations for fashion brands
When you implement these strategies effectively, you create a guided, customized shopping experience that makes customers feel understood. And that builds serious brand loyalty and affinity.
More importantly, personalization is a competitive advantage that directly impacts your bottom line through higher engagement, conversions, AOV, and customer lifetime value.
The data shows brands prioritizing personalization are simply outperforming those still stuck in one-size-fits-all mode. It’s not even close.
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