In an ever-expanding eCommerce world, it’s vital that you make your eCommerce website stand apart from the rest by providing a highly personalized experience. Whether you are focused on B2B eCommerce or B2C eCommerce, personalization should play a significant role in the marketing of your products.
But what does personalization look like in an eCommerce store, and what are the benefits of implementing it on your eCommerce site? Let’s find out!
What Is A Personalized Catalog For eCommerce Sites?
A personalized catalog is one that presents items that are likely to appeal most to the specific user. This means each and every user on the website will see their own personalized catalog and suggested items being listed.
This also gives you the opportunity to use different price points for every user, and offer bulk discounts to those who purchase from your site frequently.
You can also show users a “frequently purchased with” catalog that allows them to see what other items people generally tend to purchase along with the items that are already in their cart.
Why Do You Need A Personalized Catalog For B2B & B2C eCommerce? The Benefits:
It may require some work to set up a personalized experience for your shoppers, but it is so worthwhile in the end, and the statistics prove that shoppers are far happier when provided with a customized experience.
In fact, 77% of customers are willing to pay more for a shopping experience that is personalized, over one that is not. If it is something that more than half of your customers are willing to pay more for, then you know it is crucial to implement in your business strategy – or you will risk them going elsewhere.
If you want customers to choose your eCommerce store over that of your competitors, then you need to provide them with a customer experience that is more personalized and user-friendly than that of others.
There are many benefits to implementing a personalized eCommerce catalog, the most prominent of which are listed below:
- You can create more personalized calls to action
- Serve better-suited product recommendations
- Create higher converting landing pages
- Improve long-term customer loyalty
- Come to a better understanding of your customers
- Increase the time users spend on your website
- VIP customers can have exclusive access to some items
- Create geographical exclusions if a product is only available in a certain region
- Create license or age restrictions on certain items
All of these things can help your eCommerce store reach its revenue goals to create an even more successful business model.
How To Create A Personalized Catalog For eCommerce Sites
Now that you are quite convinced that having a personalized catalog can make your eCommerce business the success it could be, let’s take a look at exactly what needs to be done.
Start Collecting Data
In order to create a personalized catalog for your eCommerce store visitors, you will need to collect data. These are some of the data points that you should track in order to create a highly personalized experience for your customer:
- Customer data
- Purchase history
- Onsite activity
- Geo data
- Cart abandonments
- Repeat purchases
- High-value customers vs non-buyers
- Search queries
- Gender
- Onsite behavior
With this kind of data, you can create a personalized experience that will not only improve the value for the customer but increase the number of purchases on your website and increase your overall revenue.
Customize Content And Pricing By Traffic
The truth is, that not all traffic is created equal. Some traffic is far more valuable than others. Certain segments of traffic will be willing to spend more on your eCommerce website than others. And as soon as you understand which segment that is, you can serve each segment a catalog that will lead to conversions rather than a general catalog that will not likely convert.
- New visitors, returning visitors (without purchase), returning visitors (with purchase).
These are segments you will need to understand very well as a customer that has already made a purchase is more likely to purchase again. You want to show visitors that have already made a purchase that they are remembered and serve them a catalog of items suited to their interests.
- Traffic Sources
You should segment users by the traffic source that drove them to land on your website. This will allow you to understand which segment sends you the best converting customers and focus on marketing to this segment more than others. Find out whether visitors came to your website via PPC (pay-per-click advertising, email marketing, referral URL, social media, or organic search (SEO).
- Geolocation
Tracking geolocation allows you to segment visitors by their country or city through Google Analytics. This is important because it means that you can restrict certain products in areas that it is not available.
- Behavior
Tracking behavior allows you to further segment your returning customers into categories like “x days since last visit”. This gives you a better idea of just how frequently someone is visiting your site and allows you to create personalized calls to action and very specific recommendations.
- UTM Parameters
You can also create UTM segments using all of your UTM categories such as utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, utm_content, and utm_campaign.
- Device
You can also segment users by the device on which they are visiting your site. This allows you to customize the display layout to suit them best. You can segment them into desktop, mobile, tablet, etc. Or you can take it one step further and segment them by the browser used, operating system, or even the width and height of their screen.
Serve Dynamic Content To Different Traffic Segments
Once you have divided your visitors into segments you can serve them dynamic content which is specifically relevant to them. Here are a couple of examples of exactly how you can do just that:
- You can show return visitors “recently viewed items” in case it was something they are still interested in and you can re-pique their interest.
- You can provide a pop-up specifically for visitors driven to the site via Instagram – “here is 10% off for your Instagram visitors”.
- You can use geo data to serve dynamic content specifically in the language and currency in which your users are currently located.
- Use the data provided by returning customers to use the customer’s name wherever possible. This will make them feel like valuable and remembered guests.
commercebuild’s Personalization Abilities:
Commercebuild allows you to personalize your customer experience using dynamic personalized pricing. We understand that no two customers are the same, and they shouldn’t be treated that way.
Personalized and dynamic pricing in commercebuild is a great way to optimize your inventory and augment sales with targeted online promotions. Our eCommerce software syncs all pricing and discounting automatically from your ERP, so it’s always accurate and quick to update in the backend.
To personalize the customer experience and find the right price, you need to understand your buyers and their habits. By directly integrating with your ERP, the commercebuild platform helps you track all of these data points in real-time to deliver the ultimate personalized experience for each visitor.
Improve your product offering and keep your customers happy by fine-tuning your pricing strategy. Our flexible eCommerce platform comes with all of the tools you need to control customer pricing and discounting, personalize your online business, and create a memorable shopping experience.
The following features come along with the out-of-the-box commercebuild product offering:
- Omnichannel delivery
- Real-time processing and reporting
- Third-party app integration
- Personalization at scale
- Unlimited product variants
Wrapping Up Why Personalized Catalogs Are Important For eCommerce
Creating a personalized experience for your B2B and B2C eCommerce customers could not be more important. When you put convenience at their fingertips you will have them coming back for more and increasing your bottom line all at once.
Personalized catalogs provide a way for you to track your traffic segments and serve them with dynamic content that can make a difference. Ready to give personalized catalogs a try on your eCommerce store? Contact us today to get started.
About commercebuild
commercebuild is the missing piece in transforming your ERP data into a truly personalized eCommerce experience. Flexible and frictionless, our turnkey eCommerce solution delivers 24/7 revenue opportunities to you and your customers. Quick to deploy and easy-to-use, we eliminate the need for middleware between the storefront and ERP data to enable seamless online buying and selling.
Our solutions can be live in 30-days and offer complete eCommerce capabilities at a price B2B and B2C businesses can afford.
Drive revenue growth for you, and your customers, while enjoying rapid ROI for both. Go head-to-head with the online retail giants of the world, and win. Experience a solution that integrates with your ERP data and provides automagical cross-sell and upsell opportunities to every customer on your site.
At the height of ecommerce growth, commercebuild offers scalable, reliable, and robust eCommerce solutions for everyone.
If your business is using Sage 300, Sage X3 or Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central ERPs, commercebuild can build a ERP-driven B2B and B2C eCommerce webstore or Customer Portal.