How to choose the right level of personalisation for your business

Personalisation is the Holy Grail for mature online businesses. The more personalised you can make your customer journeys, the more likely visitors are to complete purchases and become loyal, repeat customers, boosting your revenue and profits.

Personalisation isn't all-or-nothing, however - you can choose from different levels of personalisation. That's why the first step in your journey to personalisation is to set goals and objectives for your e-commerce site. This will help you determine the level of personalisation that's right for your business so you can plan your personalisation strategy.

Levels of customer personalisation

The most basic level of personalisation is welcoming previous customers back to your site and making product recommendations based on their prior purchases. You can also recommend other products customers might want to buy based on other customers' purchasing patterns. Amazon was one of the first online retailers to perfect this with its "You might also like…" feature.

"This boosted the site's conversion rate by an impressive 28%"

Moving up a notch on the personalisation spectrum, you can offer a personalised navigation journey to customers based on their previous purchases or site behaviour. For example, an online golf retailer I've worked with determined through research that golfers tend to be very brand loyal when buying equipment. So they prioritize brands that customers have bought in the past when returning search results for golf equipment.

An outdoor garden furniture online retailer I've worked with delivered personalised five-day weather forecasts to site visitors based on their location. Customers were prompted to order furniture in time to receive it in time for nice weather. This boosted the site's conversion rate by an impressive 28%.

Photo: The first natural step in your personalisation journey is to set clear goals and objectives for your e-commerce site.

Which personalisation tools do you need?

To create a successful personalisation strategy, choosing the right tools is essential. Many platforms leverage AI and machine learning to offer predictive, tailored recommendations and personalised shopping experiences. These tools help segment audiences and craft individualised customer journeys by connecting various data points.

For example, knowing a customer's birthday allows you to send personalized offers and continue that journey seamlessly when they return to your site. Advanced personalisation platforms also synchronise experiences across digital channels, matching content and offers to customer preferences in real-time.

"Remember that for every audience of segment you create, it's another task that your data platform must complete when a user arrives on your site"

Such platforms can create dynamic audience segments without requiring a separate Customer Data Platform (CDP). However, as your business grows and requires more integration across divisions, a CDP may become crucial for centralising customer data and sharing it across other systems.

Some notes of caution:

Watch out for PII:The more data you collect and store about your users the greater a risk this is, and if you are storing PII, you need the right security and protection in place. For some platforms it goes against their usage policies and won't be tolerated.

Remember that for every audience of segment you create, it's another task that your data platform must complete when a user arrives on your site. Every time a users lands, the data platform will check them against each segment / audience to make sure they are in the right place, as you can imagine, the more audiences / segments there are to check, the longer this takes. This will affect site performance, and also how quickly the personalisation's are activated.

A/B testing is critical to personalisation efforts

Once you have used software and plug-ins to create personalised customer journeys, it's critical to perform A/B testing to make sure your strategy is having a positive effect on conversion rates and revenue. It's possible to over-personalise and be intrusive if customer journeys are too tailored and it is also important that whatever tool you choose, it allows A/B testing to determine how effective your personalisation tactics are.

There are some situations where using a customer's prior-purchase-data to personalise customer journeys can backfire, such as holiday shopping. For example, a husband might buy women's clothing or fragrances for his wife on Black Friday. But continuing to personalise his journey based on these one-time gift purchases would be counter-productive and send him the wrong message.

Implement the right personalisation journey

Before embarking on a personalisation initiative, take some time to figure out what level of personalisation you need based on your goals and objectives. Then determine which personalisation tools can help you achieve them. An optimisation agency can help you devise and implement the right personalisation journey for your customers.

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