How to Leverage Website Personalization as an Ecommerce Brand

As an ecommerce brand, your website is your storefront. Since your site is where visitors go to learn more about your brand and products, and hopefully purchase, it’s imperative that you provide visitors the best digital experience possible. One strategy to build an effective and high-converting ecommerce website?

Website personalization.

Keep reading to learn the basics of website personalization for ecommerce brands.

What is website personalization and how does it apply to ecommerce?

Website personalization is the act of tailoring certain web components to attract customer attention and persuade them to convert. To do this, website visitors are shown content, images, language, and other elements that are most likely to encourage them to take action.

Ecommerce brands should use a combination of contextual, demographic, and behavioral data to effectively personalize their sites for each visitor. Depending on the technology that underpins their website personalization program, some ecommerce brands can even personalize their websites for anonymous visitors.

Why is website personalization important for ecommerce companies? 

Ecommerce website personalization is a slam dunk when it comes to the customer experience. Visitors who are shown information personalized just for them are more likely to develop trust in a brand.

By showing what is likely to resonate with visitors' preferences, website personalization helps create a loyal customer base which supports a healthy conversion rate.

What elements should ecommerce companies consider personalizing for their unique business goals? 

While there are countless ways to personalize your ecommerce website, here are a few places we recommend:

• Homepage. The moment a visitor lands on a homepage is a crucial time to capture a prospect’s attention. Marketers can use contextual data to show visitors the location of the brick-and-mortar store nearest to them, or automatically divert the visitor to the appropriate product category based on their age and gender. 

• Checkout Flow. Use the time before, during, and after checkout as another opportunity to leverage website personalization. Show shoppers other items they might be interested in that may complement the item they’ve recently moved to their shopping cart.

• CTAs. Calls-to-action (CTAs) on ecommerce sites should use language that speaks to your brand’s ideal target audience. But what does this mean? Use phrases that express the right sense of urgency, think of vocabulary customers might use often in their personal or professional lives, or place your CTAs in places that are likely to get the most clicks. 

What strategies should ecommerce companies use when personalizing their website?

Here are some ideas to optimize your site based on user behavior:

• Tailor the homepage based on a user’s location. Marketers can use contextual data to detect where users are and then craft content that would be most useful to them, such as presenting prices in the local currency or displaying the address of the nearest retailer where shoppers can buy the brand’s product. 
• Place the best-selling products in a prominent place on the site. Just like a store associate who is arranging items in a shop, ecommerce marketers can use the same strategy to showcase their most popular products. 
• Incorporate visitors’ browsing history. Based on previous searches and the amount of time a consumer has spent on a page, a company can configure future search results to show the items a user has already seen, which may nudge them to make a purchase. 

What should marketers avoid when personalizing their ecommerce website?

At first glance, ecommerce website personalization may seem a bit creepy and invasive, but when used in the right way, this strategy attracts shoppers’ attention without them even realizing it. Here are a few tips:

• Don’t get too personal. Don’t use customers’ last names or any other personal information in messaging or content on your site. The goal is to show you have an active interest in the customer without them realizing how much you know about them. 

• Don’t ask for too much information. Keep the amount of information you request to a minimum. When presented with a form to sign up for something, people are more likely to complete them when there aren’t too many fields to fill in. 

• Don’t use dark patterns. In website optimization, dark patterns are strategies that trick website visitors into taking actions they might not intend to take. Avoiding this type of behavior will help your brand build a legitimate and trustworthy reputation.  

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If you’re interested in learning how our AI-driven website personalization technology can help you convert more ecommerce customers, faster book a demo today!

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