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Amazon is blazing the trail for personalised recommendations. Their homepage features items that customers are likely to enjoy based on previous purchases and items from their wish lists. Modern technology makes it easy to personalise websites so that customers see individual product recommendations. Even small and medium-sized stores can easily add such features to their websites and begin responding to their customers' individual wishes and needs. The following tips help you give better recommendations - and thus improve your conversion rate.
Know your customers: data is the key
When it comes to personalisation, your goal should be to have an online store that recommends the exact items or product groups that customers are looking for. And the best way to achieve this goal is by gathering meaningful data. Your ERP software includes several functions for querying specific pieces of static information.
Start out by deciding which criteria your individual recommendations should be based on. It's useful to consider factors like a customer's age and gender, but it's even more important to have data about a customer's previous purchases. Look for information like how often your customers place orders, how much money is spent on each purchase and which product categories are ordered. Someone who typically buys your items when they are on sale probably won't be interested in seeing recommendations for your most expensive products, and vice versa. Use your customers' buying patterns to sort them into groups.
Individual recommendations: consider location and time of purchase
Use your customers' order history to suggest similar products. But don't simply focus on the past. Rather, try to anticipate what your customers will need in the future too. For example, customers who regularly buy diapers over several months are likely to need other products for their children in the near future.
The IP address tells you where a visitor came from. You can use a customer's location to make appropriate recommendations. For example, you may want to offer seasonal products shortly before school holidays begin in different areas. Another useful piece of information is the time of purchase. For example, you may want to give some products a weekend discount or recommend products on Saturday, which can be delivered on Monday.
Customers appreciate getting personal recommendations. And this means that online sellers are well advised to analyse their data and use this information to anticipate customers' wants and needs. Implementing such strategies help sellers improve customer satisfaction and simultaneously improve their conversion rates.
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