How can product recommendations transform your visitor experience?

The bar for a personalised experience is high. Consumers expect their shopping experience to be tailored to their needs and wants, without difficulty navigating through multiple pages to get to where they want.

When people shop online, for the most part, they have something specific in mind. Or, if they come across an item of clothing that they really like, but it’s out of stock, then you can assume that there are certain elements that made them want to choose it.

But how annoying is it when you are looking at light blue mini dress with long sleeves, and the next recommended product is a white floor length skirt? That certainly doesn’t make the customer journey any easier or encourage them to keep browsing.

This is where Product recommendations can be utilised. The ability to effectively deploy product recommendations is an essential requirement for any commerce business that wants to increase engagement and conversions.

Product Recommendations – The Basics

Product recommendations can manifest in lots of different ways. But they are essentially ways for website users to see products which are more likely to suit them and what they are shopping for.

These recommendations can come at any time in the shopping journey, from when you first log in, when you search for something or click on a product, to follow-up emails. Different types of users at different stages of the customer journey call for distinct types of product recommendations.

This is really key, as identifying the right opportunities to recommend the most appropriate product can either amplify the visitor experience, push the visitor to purchase (and potentially increase the total purchase value) or completely deter the visitor.

Essentially, it is really important to serve different types of recommendations based on the goal at that moment. There are different ways you can do this based on where the user is in their journey. If it is before the customer has added to basket, you could encourage navigation with Similar Products which would increase average order value. When the customer has added to basket, there is also the opportunity to upsell to meet a free delivery threshold, utilising a message like ‘commonly bought with…’.

By providing customers with personalised and relevant product recommendations, businesses can create a more seamless and enjoyable shopping experience, making it easier for customers to find the product they are looking for and ultimately increasing the chance of purchase.

Why is this important for you and your business?

Investing in your CRO and experimentation strategy is still as vital as ever. If you are not including some sort of personalisation, you are likely to lose visitors due to several different reasons.

Firstly, people may feel the site does not have much relevance to what they are looking for. This is particularly important if competitors are personalising their website and therefore providing an experience for consumers that is easy to use and relevant to them.

Secondly, without personalisation, there is little incentive for users to return. It’s important to create a memorable and engaging experience, which can incentivise visitors to return to your website in the future.

As recently argued by Matt Smith, CEO at Webtrends Optimize, ‘due to the death of the high street, increased cost of travel etc. people aren’t going into town and physically buying things as much anymore, people are buying online more instead. Therefore, businesses need to invest in their online properties to continue to capture that market and to continue to capture every sale.’

Personalisation can also improve the visitor experience by making it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for, as well as adding more credibility as it demonstrates that you know your customers well.

When people are browsing on your site, you are going to get a mix of people who like or don’t like what you do. Personalisation is important to serve the good content only to the people who like it. Through personalising your content, you can meet the groups expectation rather than trying to meet an individual’s expectation.

This is something we are going to discuss in more detail as we outline a case study from our own experience working with one of our clients.

The Webtrends Optimize Product Recommendations Engine

At Webtrends Optimize, we work with lots of retail brands on their optimisation strategy which has exposed us to almost all the difficulties brands may come across.

When recently working with a popular and luxury fashion brand, we identified unnecessary frustrations when managing stock levels and recommending alternative products to customers.

Our website developers have been working on a tool for internal use that allows your Quality Assured team to check what website visitors will be seeing when they browse for a product.

Furthermore, this back-end tool allows you to set certain rules that clothes must adhere to when they are being pulled up on the site. This essentially means you can set certain categories that are most important to match when browsing for a product.

For example, you can set being the same colour as a main rule for recommended products to adhere to. Another one could be you have to show clothes which are the same length. You could also set it so there are some negotiables, for example, a negotiable could be the fabric. So, you could recommend a similar product that is made with a different fabric.

Another example could be having price as a negotiable. So, you could set up the rules, so every other element of the product must match, but the price is negotiable either by more than 50% or less than 50%.

This tool makes managing out of stock items a lot easier for businesses, and a lot less frustrating for customers. You are able to set the expectations of the customer, as they can clearly see what alternatives are available to them.

This also instils trust in the brand as they are working alongside their customers to provide them with the most accurate options during their shopping experience. By ensuring customers do not have to sift through out-of-stock items, they are more likely to convert and purchase something but also return as they know they will have a good shopping experience.

As discussed on an episode of #TheBigLift, getting your website personalisation not only accurate but also at the right time of the customer journey, is important for conversion. In this scenario, capturing the visitors interest whilst they are actively browsing could be the difference when visitors are purchasing.

Personalisation is more than just a tick box

Overall, product recommendations are an important part any ecommerce strategy as presenting the right products at the right time can help to improve both your customer satisfaction and increase average order value. However, it is important to remember the different ways product recommendations can be used and not just tick a box by adding some out of the box solution.