9 Ecommerce Personalization Mistakes You’re Definitely Making

Personalization, a term better known for giving marketers a hard time, has now turned even more violent. It is now a key element of every eCommerce marketing strategy. Whether it is redefining the metrics like sales, conversion rates, or repeated customers, personalization holds all the aces.

However, despite personalization of the webstore, something is still holding back a relevant, timely and high-end web experience for customers. And, this is directly or indirectly affecting all business metrics. I wonder what all places do our marketers go wrong.

They have failed to Notice the change!

Dynamic personalization provides you with many ‘intent’ clues of the visitors, which assist your website to show exactly what visitors are looking for. All this is possible only if you succeed in noticing the change and avoid the following 9 bloopers.

#1 Ridiculously Holding all your Hopes to Detailed Profiles

Most of us believe that it is impossible to recommend relative products to the visitors without detailed profiles, which is honestly laziness, if not nonsensical.

If you are a little closer to practicing marketing data driven, you would know enough things about your visitor the moment he lands on your website. The catch is to pick the clues up left while he journeys through your website through various activities and paths. We call it intent clues, as it gives a glimpse of visitor’s activity with the hint of purpose, irrespective of any detailed information.

Intent clues are on-site activity of visitor. So, look for web things like, scrolling, search box query, on-site stay time, etc.

#2 Laying the Foundation of Personalization Just on ‘Rules’

This does not work at all. Why? Because as the rules increase chances of agreement decrease, thus, increasing instances of conflict as rules can not handle the real-time queries generated by the user. Hence, the “rule based personalization” tends to lose its importance over the time. Dynamic personalization, on the other hand, uses rules, but bends them as per need, thus, rendering the best content for each interaction.

#3 Overhauling First-Generation Personalization with Expensive Technology

If your personalization tactics are lifted by such approach, better not to follow it.

To work like an effective business body in the market, all it needs is a quick deployment with minor or no change at all in the traditional means of working. Within 90 days, and not ten months, you can expect logical ROI from dynamic personalization. Unlike first-generation platforms that demand entire organizational change and in the end backfire. No need of pricey technology and tedious deployments.

Make your system intuitive with plugins that generate answers in real-time queries, rather than taking weeks for gathering data and synthesizing insights.

#4 Failing to Distinguish Between Micro and Macro Frequent Behaviors

More than what actually users do on your site you always sit and watch out for things that are less frequent in their behavior like, buying. Instead of sitting and waiting for the deal to happen, there is a lot you can learn on the road that leads to that purchase. Paying attention to engagement activities like, dwell time, scroll time, mouse clicks, searches, videos, etc, can give you a range of priceless clues, provided you pounce on them timely and act.

Shift focus from macro commitment (buying) to micro commitments (wishlisting, adding to cart, browsing, etc.) to engage the visitor in real time rather than waiting for him to bounce off your page.

#5 Taking Commerce Initiatives Looking in the Rear-View Mirror than in the Front

You take an analyst’s aid for recording various web activities, slicing and churning the data and juice out insights for personalization. In this attempt you fail to cope up with the need of the hour i.e. being responsive and lucrative at the same time.

Instead of looking for analyst who can look after thousands of web sessions, your system must be adroit enough to carry out micro-behaviors all alone and capable of determining the intent of the users so as to deliver the best result at the moment.

#6 Grouping Visitors on the Basis of their Demographics or Persona

The persona of the visitor changes with every visit and even during the visit. Such model is called like-minded peers model that is specifically designed for intent-driven audience. It provides you knowing the reason of each visitor for the stay.

The idea is simply not to classify your visitors into groups, but grouping people who share same kind of intent.

#7 Relying Completely on Website and Overlooking the Power of Mobility

It is true that website is the most engaging channel for conducting potential interactions, but not the only one. Learning from various web sessions, you can apply the tactics across mobile channel, which is next another powerful medium. It includes your business to be present on mobile apps, emails, social media and mobile website.

Being present on both the channels is a quantitative way of ensuring that your customers see more of what they want to see. Hence, including eCommerce store, get mCommerce store developed too along with applications. Again, sharing is caring for customers so, be active on social media.

#8 Ignoring the power of on-site SEARCH activity

Knowing what people search on your site can help you collect beneficial keywords that can boost your natural search performance. It can enhance your performance by four times.

The semantic search keywords (or phrases) that users enter in your search box should be the primary driver for your content strategy. It is a powerful intent indicator. Combine it with on-site micro-behaviors to groom your response.

#9 Failing to Describe your Product Well to your Customers

Misguided product sketch that confuses the customers is often seen as the reason for lesser conversion rates. Customers expect your website or mobile application to provide them with exactly what they want.

Cut through the clutter, your products should appear attractive, marking the competitive differentiation that increases revenue per visitor. Describe well about your product that entices them to click on My Cart.

Avoid tiny images or product with only one image. Ensure that your shopping cart lets users to add the item and then return to last page they were on.

The more effort you thrust upon your customers to find the exact product they are looking for, the more they are going to bounce back off.

Avoid these nine mistakes, and you can snatch in those potential customers from the competition. Employ these immediate personalization tactics and witness the real impact on your sales metrics.

[This article is written by Rahul Singh]

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