5 Trends Transforming E-Commerce Personalization

According to a recent report by Accenture, around 90% of consumers are keen to purchase from companies that provide personalized solutions and products. Further, 80% of them are also willing to share their information data for a tailored experience.

What’s more, customers are using multiple devices to interact with brands. Retailers have the opportunity to track their customers across various devices to gain valuable data on their most valued customers, how often those customers are interacting with their brand, and what those on-site experiences look like.

As a result, customers receiving all the benefits of a cohesive and personalized experience can create more value for the retailer as a direct result of being recognized throughout their journey.
Here are five trends changing the game in e-commerce personalization:

E-commerce and Omnichannel Personalization

Previously, companies were focused on forcing consumers down a narrowly defined sales funnel, which often failed to connect with them. According to an Accenture study, around 60% of respondents said they prefer the in-store buying experience because it helps them purchase desired products or services, yet 30% said brick-and-mortar stores fail to deliver easy access to in-depth product information can get online.

Until recently, personalization has been primarily concentrated on online networks. Digital-only channels are valuable, but from the customer perspective, the relationship must be consistent across all interactions, whether in-store, email, online, offline, or mobile.

Through omnichannel personalization, retailers can combine offline and online efforts to deliver more personalized and unique customer experiences across all touchpoints. Therefore, omnichannel personalization ensures that customer relationships remain consistent regardless of where and how consumers interact with the brand.

What are The Benefits of Omnichannel Personalization?

• Personalized products and content on any customer channel
• Tailoring customer's online behavior to in-store via different touchpoints. For instance, target local groceries via the clienteling app when a particular user browsed specific items online or personalize the in-app experience and trigger relevant push notifications leveraging geofencing.
• Enabling feedback tools to ensure that online product recommendations and email promotions can be individualized to reflect in-store purchases 

Thus, the more accurate an omnichannel personalized experience, the more likely consumers will show interest in a brand's offer or message and take targeted action.

AI-Driven Personalization

At present, 80% of companies already have extensive online experience with digital implications such as automation and data analytics. Machine learning and AI, on the contrary, enable systems to solve problems and take actions, which goes far beyond that. AI tools analyze immense volumes of data to allow computer systems to comprehend the data, make complex decisions, examine human behavior, and recognize human response and speech, among many other things.

When the revolution in artificial intelligence hit in 2013, many businesses started investing heavily in digital & marketing activities without a coherent strategy, which resulted in many heads of data, artificial intelligence, digital, in one corporation, and often in one division. While some of the companies advanced their digital initiatives, no sizable acquisitions were made to date.

Although 80% of executives agreed that they are familiar with machine-learning solutions, the application remains low, with only 15% of respondents saying they were using them. However, around 30% have confirmed that they will be investing in machine learning to enable real-time personalized advertising and optimizing their message targeting.

For example, Revieve's digital beauty advisor technology provides unique e-commerce customer experiences by enabling highly accurate skin analysis based on customers' selfie pictures and personalized engagement with skincare, health, wellness, and color cosmetics products. All that with the biggest concern around customer privacy protection.

Providing Personalized Pricing

Personalized pricing is on the rise in the retail industry. Some online retailers return to the marketplace's tactics, categorizing Internet users to set different prices for different customers.

Just like the seller at a bazaar, e-tailers can 'size up' each customer and analyze its purchase behavior to set the price accordingly.

"Every retailer, once you get to their website, they know where you are from because of your IP address. And they know that to the accuracy of a ZIP code, so they can know that you are from a more affluent area, for example," said Hana Ben-Shabat, partner for the Americas atA.T. Kearney, a global consulting firm.

As a result, e-commerce retailers are better at analyzing their online customers' behaviors to create customized sales offers and attractive promotions suited to each customer to improve their chances of driving conversions.
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By customizing the shopping experience on an individual level, retailers can use customer-level data to increase customer satisfaction. Tesla, for instance, implements a personalized pricing strategy when conducting sales with a customer. Even Uber has experimented with personalized pricing by suggesting "premium pricing."

Advanced Recommendations and Retargeting

The current high focus and ongoing developments surrounding the product recommendations will accelerate this trend as brands and retailers prioritize retargeting solutions to re-engage their audiences with intelligent product recommendations based on customers’ previous interactions with brands.

For instance, retailers can display products with highly relevant advertisements to each customer to avoid posting generic ads. It helps retailers keep track of purchasing records made by the shopper through other channels and avoid using those product recommendations in their retargeting ads.

What’s more, many retailers also are using retargeting to showcase ads for products and services that visitors have left in their shopping baskets, offering exclusive deals to drive conversions.

“Endless” Shopping Experiences

Companies like Netflix have revolutionized, and personalized customer experiences, with features like Continue Watching that enable users to continue a movie or program they have partially watched.

By allowing customers to "continue shopping or watching," retailers enhance returning customers' personalization and experiences. By remembering shoppers' preferences based on their previous sessions, retailers allow customers to pick up exactly where they left off when they return to a site.

E-commerce personalization enables businesses to offer "hyper-personalized" recommendations and shopping experiences tailored to customers on multiple channels and at every touchpoint.

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