When you are trying to design an e-commerce site, it’s vital to make sure that you are standing out from the competition. This means designing a site that will provide a unique experience. There are two excellent ways that you can do this. These are personalization and customization. Let’s take a closer look at these concepts and how you will be able to incorporate them into your website.
What Are Personalization and Customization?
Let’s start by discussing what personalization and customization in e-commerce mean and why these concepts are so important.
Customization is the ability for the client to change the product to better suit them. For example, you can let clients choose what type of designs they want to put on the back of their shirts. Alternatively, they might want to change the size of an item.
Personalization is how you change the experience of using the website to suit the customer. For example, imagine that you are running a news website. You can find out the geographical data of where a customer lives. Then, you can show the events that are happening in their local area at the top of the page. In the e-commerce space, you can base the items you are recommending on what the customer has searched for. This will ensure they are seeing things that they have expressed an interest in purchasing.
The biggest difference is who is in control of the process. Customization is driven by the customer. They will be actively making the changes. Personalization is trickier. It will need to be driven by your website, changing the environment to better suit the user.
The Importance of Personalization
Now that we know what it is, we can talk about some of the benefits that e-commerce personalization can offer. First, it will allow you to learn what your customers like. Picking the right time to offer a special offer or product to promote will allow you to improve the efficiency of your marketing materials. This will let you improve the number of leads you are generating and boost sales.
Another huge benefit is the ability to get to know your customers better. You can learn more about the type of products people are looking for. This data can make it easier to stay up to date with the latest trends.
Plus, you will be able to improve the experience of using your website. There are hundreds of other e-commerce sites that customers can use. Because of this, you need to find a way of building brand loyalty.
Incorporating Personalization
To create a personalized experience for customers you will need to use a personalization engine tool. This is something that will track the behavior of users on your site. They will often incorporate machine learning and data analytics to sort through a lot of customer information. They will then be able to build a profile for the customer. As a result, the tool can decide on the content to show and the type of special offers to present.
Conclusion
There are a few tools that you can use to improve your e-commerce site. Two of the biggest are customization and personalization. When used correctly, these will increase customer retention and boost sales. So, use these to improve the user experience on your e-commerce site.