Why You Should Adopt Personalization Beyond Your Homepage

It’s hard to imagine what it would be like to visit Amazon without immediately being presented with product recommendations based on past purchases and other items you’ve looked at, or simply put, without ecommerce personalization.
Amazon is known for a lot of things, but one of them is definitely ecommerce personalization. The site has become renowned for how well it is able to adapt to each unique customer.
Yet, it’s not just the homepage of Amazon that leverages ecommerce personalization. Wherever you go on the site – from an individual product page to the basket page – Amazon is reacting to the information it has gathered on you over the years.
Is your company currently doing the same?

Why Ecommerce Personalization Is Important Throughout Your Site

In short, if a page on your site is important, it should be able to adapt to the unique traits of the visitors who are on it. Otherwise, you simply cannot target each, individual user. At best, you’ll only ever get better at reducing the size of the net you’re casting.
That’s hardly ideal.
As Jeff Bezos said back in 1998, “If we have 4.5 million customers, we shouldn’t have one store. We should have 4.5 million stores.”
Customizing your homepage is a nice start, but most of the visitors who stick around are going to want to go elsewhere.
What will they find when they explore?
Will you continue to impress them with pages that are personalized?
Or will they quickly become disappointed after you made such a powerful first impression?

6 Pages That Will Benefit from Ecommerce Personalization 

You can’t begin making the most of ecommerce personalization without understanding how it has to be implemented on your website’s various pages. Each page has a unique purpose. Ecommerce personalization must be used in order to further it.
Here is how you can use this essential approach on the six most important pages on your site.

1. Homepage

Obviously, it goes without saying that your homepage is important. When Moz ran a test, they found that implementing ecommerce personalization on their website had the following beneficial results:

• 1.5% increased engagement
• 113% increased conversions to their Solutions page
• 117% increased conversions on their CTA

Here are some examples of options you can provide visitors to personalize your homepage:

• Featured Products
• Last Visited
• Smart Recommendations

Keep in mind, too, that your homepage will be the first one most visitors see when they come to your site. It is vital that you keep its bounce rate low or those other pages of yours probably won’t receive much attention.

2. Category Page

Some visitors will come to your site and immediately go right to the product page they already know they want.
That’s not always going to be the case, though. Many of your visitors will have a general idea of what they’re looking for and, thus, will head to the appropriate category page.
This is when you can capitalize and use ecommerce personalization to provide a better solution. Here are some options to help them find their way:

• Selected for You
• Season’s Trends
• Smart Recommendations

Even if your visitor understands what they want to buy, being able to recommend other categories in which to peruse will help increase your average sale.

3. Product Page

Similarly, every product page on your site has a lot of potential. Once a customer finds what they’re looking for, the product page can be used to upsell and cross-sell them. Again, you’re giving visitors a better experience and increasing the amount of your average purchase.

• You May Also Like
• Others Also Bought
• Similar Products
• Smart Recommendations

Amazon’s upsell strategy is envied by companies all over the world, but without ecommerce personalization, it would be impossible to achieve.

4. Basket Page

Cart abandonment statistics are absolutely staggering. Many companies easily lose more than 70% of the customers who, at one time, had a basket page with them. They actually went to the trouble of finding products they liked and putting them into a basket but never followed through with their purchase.
This can happen for a lot of reasons, but one is that customers find competitor sites with better basket pages, specifically because they leverage ecommerce personalization.
Don’t lose customers for such a simple reason. Instead, use personalization to offer them options like these:

• Bought Together
• Last Minute Offers
• Bundled Products
• Smart Recommendations

Do you think a customer will explore other sites when your basket page is offering them bundled products or recommendations about products that are usually bought in tandem?

5. Error Page

Most error pages display some version of the typical “404” message and that’s about it. What a missed opportunity! Clearly, the website visitor was looking for something specific. Why not help them find it (or, at the very least, something similar)?
If nothing else, you want to help your visitor get back on track. For example, Amazon’s 404 page has their search bar available.
Munchkin’s 404 page is another great example. It encourages visitors to sign up for their email campaign to receive 10% off.
Overstock’s error page brings visitors to their “We Recommend” page.
While these are all better alternatives than the traditional 404 redirect, imagine how much they could be improved with ecommerce personalization. Your company can take what they already know about the visitor and turn an empty page into an opportunity.

6. Checkout Pages

Finally, there is the all-important checkout page.
This is yet another opportunity to increase profits with upsells and cross-sells. At this point, someone is ready to spend money with your company, so why not make a final effort to increase the amount?
Here are the most important options to offer:

• You Also Viewed
• Special Offers
• Smart Recommendations

Implementing Ecommerce Personalization Throughout Your Site

Now that you better understand how ecommerce personalization will benefit your entire site, the next step is getting started on implementation. Once your efforts go live, the work will be well worth it as you’ll be better able to engage customers without increasing your overhead.
If you’d like help moving forward, consider the ecommerce personalization solutions offered by Segmentify. They’re easy to implement, which means you’ll soon notice a difference throughout each of the website pages we outlined above.