How to Use On-site eCommerce Personalization to Boost Conversions

eCommerce personalization is a ‘hygiene factor’. That means your customers probably take it for granted — but if you get it wrong, they won’t hesitate to find an alternative.

Clearly, personalization is essential. And if you don’t figure out how to use it for your own store, you could be leaving countless sales on the table. That’s why this blog post covers a series of personalization strategies you can use to grow conversion rates and improve your user experience. Ready? Let’s go.

What Are The Benefits of eCommerce Personalization?

eCommerce personalization is a conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy that dynamically shows user-specific content and offers to your store visitors. Personalization can be based on browsing behavior, purchasing history, location or demographic data, and more.

If that seems like a lot of work, don’t worry — it’s well worth the effort. Here are some benefits of personalization:

• Personalization can grow conversion rates by 10 – 15%
• Employee engagement grows by 20 – 30%
• 60% of consumers say a personalized experience would make them a repeat buyer

There are two kinds of e-commerce personalization:

• Off-site personalization: targeted social media ads, email marketing (think abandoned cart emails).
• On-site personalization: dynamic content, product recommendations, banners and pop-ups.

As a store owner, you probably do a lot of off-site personalization already. But when your customers arrive at your store, they get the same shopping experience as everyone else. That’s why we’re going to focus on three critical on-site personalization strategies.

Three Examples of an On-site Personalization Strategy

#1. Using dynamic content blocks

Your customers arrive at your store from different sources, often a trusted third party. (The Shopify analytics dashboard will contain this data). Based on the kind of source (a blog or review site, for example) and the type of audience it attracts, you can customize your headlines, CTAs, and images for optimal conversions.

Shopify offers a great example from Gymshark. A generic landing page might look like this:

But if the data shows that some of the customers are women arriving from a blog about health and fitness, one could opt for an image that reflects its audience better:

Notice that the second image also includes the referral source. All of this contributes to a seamless and personalized shopping experience.

This strategy applies to your ads as well — targeted ads that lead to generic landing pages are tragedies in motion. Ensure your ads lead to customized landing pages by using UTM parameters. They're the identifiers at the end of your URL that tell your website where your customers come from:

https://example.com/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=winter_bogo

Here, the parameters are:

• utm_source
• utm_medium
• utm_campaign

In your Shopify store, modify the /source and /campaign parameters to manipulate the copy and media for your landing pages, making sure to create one for each unique ad. If this seems a little technical, don’t worry — there are lots of tools to help.

#2. Product recommendations

Amazon pioneered the algorithmic product recommendation, but now it’s your turn. Upselling on product detail pages allows you to offer higher-margin products or increase basket size with complementary items. 

Typically, these recommendations look at the customers’ browsing history (or purchase history for returning visitors) and compare it to other similar customers. 

• If Adam purchased products A, B, and C 
• While Bree bought products B, C, and D 
• Your store could recommend product A to Bree
• And D to Adam

A great example is Pura Vida, a store that sells bracelets. On every product detail page, they’ll show two categories for recommendations: ‘recently viewed’ and ‘customers also like.’

This system’s conversion rate averages out to 7.9% for Pura Vida!

#3. Banners and popups

On-site retargeting is far more affordable than doing it off-site. You have several opportunities to engineer a micro-conversion based on factors like cart value and browsing behavior; a tried and true tactic is offering a discount in exchange for an email. Typically, you offer this to a first-time visitor — this example from ColourPop lives in a banner:

The key benefit of a popup, banner, or overlay is behavioral targeting. Key points in your customer journey have high dropoff or abandonment points — checkout is a great example. When your store detects this point, a well-targeted pop-up can convert an unsure customer.

The Best Personalization Platforms for Shopify

Want to implement these ideas in your eCommerce personalization strategy? Here are some Shopify apps and tools that can help you out:

• Nosto: A machine-learning-powered personalization platform that offers product recommendations (among other things).
• Privy: Offers customizable, gamified, mobile device-friendly popups and banners to boost conversions.
• LimeSpot Personalizer: A popular platform for eCommerce personalization, upselling, and bundling.

Now all that’s left to do is start selling!

It’s Time to Upgrade Your Shopify Store

On-site personalization is just one of many strategies you can use to optimize your Shopify store’s conversion rates. As you begin to scale and grow, you’re going to need bespoke services to build the best personalization schemes for your business — that’s where Flaym comes in. Our experts can help you with CRO, email marketing, and more! 

Curious to learn more? Check out the rest of our blog or contact us today.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is eCommerce personalization important?

Personalized eCommerce businesses stand out in a growing body of online stores. With so many options available to consumers every day, eCommerce personalization helps businesses differentiate themselves from competitors.

How do I personalize my eCommerce store?

A strong personalization strategy will include a combination of on-site and off-site targeting. On-site, use dynamic content blocks, targeted overlays, and recommendations underneath product pages.

What business value does personalization have in eCommerce?

Online retailers have much to gain from personalization efforts. Personalized eCommerce improves the customer experience, generates 40% higher average order values, and reduces marketing costs by 10 – 20%.