21 Ecommerce Personalization Examples To Boost Your Sales

In this article, we’ll examine ecommerce personalization examples proven to sell more, retain customers, and increase lifetime value. We’ll cover:

• How one brand generated 24 million personalized recommendations and an additional 1.6 million clicks on their Shopify Plus-powered site within one year
• How leveraging user-generated content throughout your funnel lifts conversions 166% on average
• How a bestsellers page—personalized by recency, popularity, or geography—can drive a 50% on-page CTR

The most successful brands capture their customers’ attention and keep them coming back, and one of the most effective ways to do this is ecommerce personalization.

Table of Contents

1. What is ecommerce personalization?
2. 7 Scalable ecommerce personalization tactics
3. Takeaways
4. Ecommerce personalization FAQ

What is ecommerce personalization?

Ecommerce personalization is the practice of tailoring the online shopping experience to the individual preferences and needs of each customer.This can include personalized product recommendations, targeted marketing messages, and customized website content based on factors such as browsing history, purchase history, and demographic information. By providing a personalized shopping experience, ecommerce businesses can increase customer engagement, improve customer loyalty, and boost sales.

Personalization programs have been shown to yield10 to 15% higher conversion rates and 20% higher customer satisfaction rates—and customer satisfaction is particularly important since businesses thatincrease their retention by a mere 5% see profit increase between 25 and 95%. That type of sustainable growth is also the cheaper option for you as a retailer, since it’s between 5 and 25% more expensive for you to get new customers than it is to retain current ones.

Of course, online personalization is easy when your SKU count and customer base are in the low-to-mid thousands.

Unfortunately, when those numbers jump into the hundreds of thousands and beyond, finding a simple yet profitable solution can be overwhelming.

7 scalable ecommerce personalization tactics

Here are ecommerce personalization examples organized around seven tactics that won’t break at scale.

1. Leverage intelligent product-detail page recommendations
2. Show continuous shopping for returning customers
3. Create personalized bestseller lists to drive click-throughs
4. Integrate user-generated content across your funnel
5. Retarget in-session based on behavioral triggers
6. Time social retargeting with smart recommendations
7. Automate three personalized messaging types

1. Leverage intelligent product-detail page recommendations

Product-detail page (PDP) recommendations show shoppers similar or complementary products to the ones they’re already interested in. You can leverage dynamic upselling by recommending items higher in price but similar in style or by brand. Even with higher margins they're proven to convert the best.

Cross-selling on PDPs makes it easier to recommend complementary items and inspire online shoppers to increase their cart size. In this example,Urbanararecommends relevant home accessories similar to items in their shoppers’ carts.

Merchant spotlight: Personalizing product recommendations

Pura Vidawas the first to leverageYotpofor customer reviews and Nosto for personalization. They created two recommendation categories on their product pages:

Within the first year, this combination generated:

• 24 million recommendations and an additional 1.6 million clicks
• 7.9% average recommendation conversion rate
• More than 10% of overall revenue through Nosto’s integration with Shopify Plus

Griffin Thall, cofounder ofPura Vida Bracelets, uses the Nosto integration with Shopify Plus and believes, “Shopify Plus has truly allowed us to sync our operations with vendors, apps and tech partners, as well as provide amazing reporting.”

The most effective PDP recommendations allow shoppers to jump to associated complementary categories. For example, when a shopper onBandier’ssite views a tank top, they’re also shown recommendations of matching shoes and pants.

类似于连续购物,浏览历史on the PDP also makes it easy to return to previously viewed items. PDP recommendations improve the shopping experience for customers and is proven to increase conversion rates and average order value.

2. Show continuous shopping for returning customers

Netflix's “continue watching” feature is a powerful engagement tactic. Applying that to ecommerce experience, continuous shopping recommendations was born. For high-growth retailers, it's a value-add.

With Netflix, instead of manually searching and scanning through videos, you can pick up right where you left off with a click.

Similarly, continuous shopping recommendations remembers your visitor’s selected items and preferences through previous sessions. Website visitors can pick up right where they left off. So, it's easier for your visitors to buy when they're ready without having to search again.

3. Create personalized bestseller lists to drive click-throughs

People are drawn to popular products—think of the magic of the New York Times bestseller book list. To shake things up, you can highlight your bestsellers using the dimension oftime. Highlight those in-demand products from over the last 24 hours, or even the past hour, depending on your website's traffic.

Campus Proteinused this tactic and the brand sawa 50% click-through rate from the best seller page to product pageswhichdoubled the brand's conversions year over year.

You can definitely get creative with this approach: instead of ranking products by sales, try displaying the most reviewed or segment by location. Showing best sellers by location can be powerful if you sell fashion in multiple climates or if your store specializes in sports team gear. Your customers from Los Angeles probably aren’t shopping for the same clothing in winter as your shoppers from New York City are. Find what works best for your unique products and customers.

For years,LeSportsacprimarily sold their “deluxe” products which are inherently elegant and minimal in design. However, when looking at their Google Analytics data, they noticed a large subset of their traffic comes from Hong Kong, where bolder designs and color schemes tend to resonate more with consumers.

By leveraging recommendations labeled asTrending Sellers By Location, they were able to expose a completely unique set of products to their Hong Kong clientele instead of the ones LeSportsac had sold to their US customers:

4. Integrate user-generated content across your funnel

User-generated content (UGC)can bring another dimension to your site. By posting photos, videos, and reviews from customers, visitors get the chance to see your product in real life.

And consumers are just as receptive to making peer-based decisions. In the US alone,54% of consumerssay they learn about new and interesting products from friends and acquaintances. Fortunately, withShopify Flow, it’s possible to easilyintegrate all of your tech toolsto create seamless, inspiring experiences.

Unfortunately, most businesses stop short of integrating UGC throughout their onsite funnel, limiting its use to rating on product pages or shares on social media.

What are top brands doing instead?

SeaVeesmakes UGC (collected from Instagram) prominent on their homepage and PDPs by linking directly to a curated collection of shoppable posts, many of which are submitted by customers through SeaVees branded hashtag:

Similar to Seavees’s use of UGC, Skinnydip London displays Instagram images on their homepage from their loyal shoppers with aShop the Gramheadline:

Campus Protein doubles up on UGC and customer advocacy with some of their high-demand products. For example, on the PDP promoting Bang Energy Drink, they first display a carousel of Instagram-inspired UGC under the product image:

As you scroll further down the page, you’ll also find a video that features a spin on the traditional product review:

Learn how Campus Protein strategizes for success using Nosto and Shopify Plus in this two-minute video.

5. Retarget in-session based on behavioral triggers

Off-site retargeting can be expensive. Thankfully, on-site interstitials is an alternative. The key is to be intuitive, not intrusive, with your popups.

You can do this by timing or triggering popup offers to match each visitor’s in-session behavior. Trigger these pop-ups through automation based on characteristics like number of sessions, cart value, and browsing behavior (both historical and real time).

It’s a good idea to offer first-time visitors exclusive discounts and promotions in exchange for their email addresses, like in the example below fromUrbanara. Once someone adds items to their cart, you can offer tiered discounts to drive upaverage order value (AOV).

True Vintage uses an interesting alternative to discounts across the board—free shipping with a pricing threshold. In this example, the brand offers free shipping for all UK orders over £150:

Another great popup option is to reengage returning visitors with reminders of what they’ve browsed (but never purchased) in order to drive them towards checkout. Bandier deploys a popup for returning visitors that displays recommendations based on previous browsing behavior:

6. Time social retargeting with smart recommendations

Even if a visitor leaves your site, there are ways to get their attention back through retargeting on social media. To make this approach successful, you need to choose your timing wisely.

One of the more advanced forms of retargeting is granulated retargeting. The value of a site visitor declines the longer they’ve been away from your site, so you can save a lot on ad spend by layering your retargeting as their value declines. You can also shorten your retargeting period to 7 to 14 days so you’re engaging customers when they’re most likely to still convert.

同样重要的是要注意你proaching these shoppers: whether it’s with products relevant to their previous purchases or simply by reminding them of your unique selling proposition.

Byusing an AI-powered tool, you can retarget shoppers at just the right time to avoid having them forget about you or buying from a competitor.

One fun way of staying in front of your shoppers is by combining your retargeting ad with a boosted video to remind your customers why they should buy from you rather than a competing brand—a tactic Chubbies deploys:

7. Automate three personalized email and SMS types

If an online shoppershares their email address or mobile number with you, your brand has another way toengage and convertthem. By continuously engaging customers, you can reach out no matter where your customers are, which keeps your company top of mind.

So let’s delve into three messaging techniques that get their attention:

1. Abandoned cart messaging

Optimizing your checkout experience is a necessary step toreducing abandoned carts, but you’ll never eliminate them altogether. For example, many shoppers get distracted and leave ecommerce sites with items still in their cart.

When this happens, you can jog their memory with an abandoned cart email. Morvélo sends customers an email containing items they left in their cart to encourage them to come back and finish the purchase.

You can also use this as a way to catch visitor’s attention. For example, Dope displays a pop up after a visitor adds an item to their cart:

2. “We miss you” messaging

If a shopper forgets about their cart, you can nudge them with a kind email. Supporters Place sends emails to re-engage visitors and announce new, exciting, products to remind the visitor of what they’d looked at in the past.

3. Order follow-up messaging

The checkout is just thebeginning of your relationship with a buyer. Check in with buyers after purchase and provide customized product recommendations based on their previous orders. Here’s howergoPouchdoes it:

Learn more:10 omnichannel examples

Takeaways

Personalization sets your brand apart from others and creates a relationship between your business and your customers. Shopify PlusCertified AppsandService Partnershelp brands build experiences that build customer engagement resulting in a sustainable, successful future for your business.