Shoppers like to think they’re treated well and cared for across some retail stores especially, if they’re a regular customer, prefer the variety of products available or maybe even for the standard of customer service they receive which may not be the same at other stores. One of the most common examples is the availability of online and physical grocery stores where shoppers uniquely prefer stores based on their choice, past experience, variety of products, availability, offers and discounts, customer service, recommendations and referrals. These are some of the attributes that contribute towards personalized shopping experience.
Retail Stores – Online retail stores work a little differently than a physical store. Discounts and offers are physically put on display in a brick and mortar store, while the online marketplace provides a great platform to present a personalized online shopping experience where offers and discounts can be curated specially for a particular visitor. It greatly depends on a visitor’s product browsing history categorically leading to a product being added to cart or possibly even a sale. Given the huge online retail marketplace it is always advised that asking for a customer’s personal information like name, email and phone number be kept as the last thing they do on your store so as to keep it seeming like a task that is mandatory for a visitor to be reminded of a product’s availability or maybe checking out.
The best way to personalize shopping experience is by adding value to their past or future visits by providing recommendations, offering a premium service, request feedback to learn about their experience, provide check out based discounts that apply on future visits that would encourage them to make a visit sooner.
Alternative approaches that contribute to a fully personalized online shopping experience are:
Email- Sending monthly or regular post visit emails to show the customer’s experience, request for new products or services and future applicable discounts is a great way to keep the customer engaged. This method is also considered to be the most customer engaging. Do not SPAM.
Devices – People are logged in on various devices and their online shopping hunt starts from a PC and may end up leading to a sale on a smartphone device. This ease of access for customers to start from one device and end on another is considered a valuable service that is synced throughout is not offered by other retailers.
Payment methods – Every retailer has a store full of products to sell and maybe only a couple of payment methods that not everyone is comfortable with. Add up a variety of payment options like pay in 6 monthly instalments or by using credit card loyalty points. Another way to increase momentum in your buyer’s purchasing power is by introducing retail store based line of credit to allow customers to buy products right away and pay later.
These are some of the most common techniques used to enhance online shopping personalization.
