4 eCommerce Summer Must-Haves

In more recent years, personalised messaging has become one of the most compelling methods e-commerce sites use to promote their brands and drive revenue. Sharing the right message with a specific customer at the most optimal time (and on the most ideal platform) can help to significantly increase engagement and transactions.
Major brands like Nike and Asos have been utilising personalisation for things like driving brand loyalty, increased AOV (average order value) and of course, to decrease cart abandonment. With 70% of millennials willing to let retailers track their browsing and shopping behaviours in exchange for a better shopping experience; there’s no longer any excuse for a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to your customers. 
Consumers are demanding more from e-commerce sites and with personalised emails delivering 6x higher transaction rates (Experian), we need to answer the call. 
With the summer holidays approaching quickly, it’s the perfect time for us to share this season’s must-have items for a seamless personalised user journey. 

1 – Recommendations

Recognising your customers and making product recommendations based on that visitor’s personal behaviour is a sure-fire way to create an engaging experience. About 70% of millennials are frustrated with brands sending them irrelevant marketing messages. Personalised recommendations are a necessary part of making returning customers feels at home on your site and for building a real-time connection with brand new visitors. 
Through personalised recommendations you can help fuel impulsive purchases, incentivise visitors with last-minute discounts and suggest complementary products throughout the checkout journey. A fantastic must have for personalisation – recommend that summer hat to go alongside the new pair of sandals in your customer’s cart!  

2 – Segmentation

Refined customer segmentation is the heart of personalisation within any company. Data allows you to figure out who your visitors are, track of different customer behaviours and product performances, and gives you the opportunity to make data-driven decisions for your marketing campaigns.
Proper segmentation within personalisation can better help brands to understand behaviours such as price sensitivity, batch ordering, and indecisiveness in your visitors which in turn helps retailers shape their offerings for their visitors. 
Product segments are going to help you show up with discounts when they matter to your customers, pinpoint the products losing tempo on your site and most importantly act in real-time. You may just have an overstock of last season’s swimsuits that you can attach a summer price drop to. 

3 – Cart Recovery

Barclaycard estimates that British shoppers abandon online baskets worth almost £30 a month which has the potential to reach more than £18bn in lost sales every year. A vital part of your summer must-haves includes creating an engaging experience to avoid cart abandonment. 
Email remarketing is a typical approach to diminishing cart abandonment, but performance largely depends on how tailored emails are to customers. 
Email messages with personalised content that show you understand the customer and their journey can make the ultimate difference when looking to recover a sale. You can add push notifications to that equation too. 

4 – Cross-Device Functionality

Tons of customers can visit your website by easily searching on their mobile phones. They may then decide to visit next time via their desktop computer or an Ipad to check out some of your content. A customer’s journey is rarely one-dimensional and your approach to personalisation needs to reflect that.

To offer a seamless and consistent experience, it needs to encompass a cross-device journey where you can link specific users through various devices with consistent messaging.  

It seems that it is no longer seen as ‘creepy’ to try to personalise or engage with visitors on your site – in actuality consumers seem to prefer it!
75% of consumers ‘like it’ when brands personalise their promotional messaging and 61% of consumers prefer personally relevant offers, according to a study by the Aberdeen Group. 
Now with great power comes great responsibility; use personalisation wisely in this summer heat so you can avoid getting burned.