For a long time, e-commerce has been on the hunt for the holy grail of personalization — a consistent, cross-channel experience that adapts to customer needs and goals in real time.

The good news for digital commerce is that these technologies have arrived.

The bad news is that the sheer amount of these technologies, which offer very different levels of personalization, means it’s unclear what designing personalized user experiences in e-commerce means and how you can achieve it.

What Is E-Commerce Personalization?

Bloomreach defines e-commerce personalization as the practice of using commerce data responsibly to get to know, guide, and impress your customers with experiences that are so relevant and contextual, they feel like magic. E-commerce personalization spans cross-channel, on-site, and in-app. It encompasses anonymous and known customers, and includes personalized messages, content, site layouts, products, and much more. It is driven by real-time, first-party data. This results in measurable journeys that engage and lead customers through brand awareness to product discovery to repeat purchases.

Personalization is increasingly important to merchants seeking to not only engage shoppers, but to also increase repeat purchases, drive sales, and increase conversion.

It comes in many different forms, from personalized product recommendations on a retailer’s homepage or product detail page to cart abandonment marketing emails and onboarding quizzes that provide a personalized showroom of items to consumers.

Benefits of Personalization in E-Commerce (With Stats!)

Before the explosion of digital commerce, customers simply walked into stores and found a friendly clerk who helped them find what they wanted.

Pretty simple, right?

Unfortunately, that kind of personal customer attention remains exceedingly rare in the digital realm. Even in the “age of the customer,” retailers, brands, and B2B companies talk a great deal about the need to personalize the customer experience without truly investing in this vital strategy.

Let's take a look at the benefits of personalization for e-commerce businesses.

🔍 Consider these e-commerce personalization stats:

• Marketers see an average increase of 20% in sales when using personalized experiences. ()
• 80% of shoppers are more likely to buy from a company that offers personalized experiences. ()
• 60% of consumers say that they will likely become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience with a particular company. ()
• 78% of consumers have chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized service or experience. ()
• 53% of digital experience delivery professionals said they lack the right technology to personalize experiences. ()

These are the game-changing facts of personalization — it not only helps your customers achieve their goals while engaging with your brand, but can also align with your business goals when the right strategy is in place. A personalized experience can lead directly to KPIs like increased conversions, average order values, and revenue growth.

And while all these rising stats prove that consumer attitudes have gravitated towards online shopping for years, COVID-19 accelerated the shift. New habits have formed, and consumers are much more likely to seek out a personalized experience.

As Pam Danziger, luxury retail expert and author, shared in a conversation on steering retail companies through the pandemic, we're going to see even more distinction between the idea of going shopping as an experience and actually having to buy something as we come out of this crisis. The shopping and buying experiences have become disintermediated.

Read this next: The State of Commerce Experience 2021 [Analyst Study]

Designing Personalized Experiences in E-Commerce

The heart of personalization is goal attainment. As such, the goals you set out for your personalization efforts should be customer driven.

It’s not about simply delivering what your business wants. You need to let visitors consume the experience how they prefer and help them achieve their goals at each stage in their journey.

Think of a business you interact with online — your favorite store, your bank, a vacation booking site — and recall the variety of goals you’ve looked to accomplish there.

Your needs from a home goods store may be quite different during wedding season. You relied on your bank for a new set of information when buying a home, and your vacation preferences change depending on whether you're traveling by yourself or with family.

Each visitor interacts with businesses in a multitude of ways, and truly powerful personalization looks beyond who you are to what you are trying to achieve right now.

Site search, browsing data, product recommendations, landing pages, and all other interaction points should work cohesively to build a complete picture of each visitor across their journey.

Of course, this is easier said than done. While personalization is an increasingly hot topic, most businesses are still in the early stages of understanding how to best utilize it.

When embarking on a new personalization strategy or revamping an existing one, personalization boils down to three main questions:

👉 [Question 1]: Where Should Personalization Occur in the User Experience?

Look at all the channels and touchpoints your customers interact with. Where would a personalized element help the most? Product recommendations, inspirational content, location-based services, site search, customer portals — they all can play a role in creating a seamless customer journey. Mapping out each micro-moment that could benefit from a more contextual experience is an important step in the process.

Check out this example below from Bloomreach Engagement user MALL.CZ. This personalized video campaign helped send thousands of personalized product recommendations to a specifically targeted audience.

👉 [Question 2]: What Information Will Be Used?

What tools do you already have — CRM, marketing automation, A/B testing, transactional systems, etc. — that offer a wealth of information? Take your map of where you’d like personalization to occur, decide which of your current tools could help support each micro-moment, and identify the gaps in data you need to fill to complete your vision.