February 22, 2023
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The holiday season is almost upon us, which means you should hopefully have been busy setting up your online store for a successful Q4! If you're a bit late, don’t worry. Personalisation could be the holiday miracle you’ve been hoping for.
We believe personalisation can truly be the key to your success over the final - and crucial - few months of the year. So we have put together a list of quick, easy-to-implement solutions to make sure you're on top of your game.
Ever received a present so at odds with your taste that you’ve wondered if the giver knows you at all? Ignore the individuality of your customers and they could be left wondering the same thing.
We now have more information about buyers than ever before, and you would be silly not to use it: customers that are displayed personalised recommendations convert up to 65% better.
Harvest previously-gathered customer insights, such as browsing and buying behaviour, and use these to display personalised product recommendations, making sure the journey to the perfect item is as quick and smooth as possible.
In an ideal world, you would know everything about every person who comes to your store - but what about new visitors you are yet to get to know? While you may not be able to offer them 1:1 personalisation straight away, that isn’t to say you can’t steer them in the right holiday direction!
Apply crowd logic to your recommendations, automatically highlighting best-sellers and top trending pieces. Not only will you be presenting those items most likely to convert, but also reflecting seasonal changes and trends that could mean the difference between holiday happiness and a festive flop.
If ever there was proof that shoppers love a bargain, then Black Friday and Cyber Monday are it. In fact, in 2014 Cyber Monday was the biggest online shopping day in US e-commerce history, with sales of $2.65 billion USD. And now that phenomenon has crossed the pond, meaning everyone has the chance to boost their holiday season with much-in-demand sales!
Of course, it is best practice to announce your discounts early in an email or newsletter, but let’s face it, you’re not going to be the only one taking that approach. Stand out from the crowd by giving customers a personalised glimpse of what’s to come - with recommendations based on what they have previously browsed or bought.
Not only is this going to increase your sales, but it’s also exemplary customer service.
During the holiday season PPC budgets soar, meaning relevant traffic to your website can cost you more than a poorly thought-out present for your spouse! But don’t be too quick to increase your marketing spend, instead concentrate on increasing ROI by adding landing page recommendations to your site.
By showing shoppers what others using the same search term have gone on to buy, you can create an easy and relevant path from search engine to checkout.
Remember, you have paid money to get these buyers to your site so don’t let them get away now!
There is no denying that people are more likely to be in the spending mood during the festive period. Encourage this by suggesting the products other customers have typically purchased with the items in your buyer’s cart.
This not only makes it easier for them to find relevant items, but also gives you the opportunity to include alternative, more expensive products or more profitable in-house brands, helping boost average order sizes and increase profit margins.
Another great feature is adding stocking-filler recommendations on the cart page, to encourage impulse buys - like a sales assistant asking someone if they would like the batteries with the toy they are about to buy.
It offers great customer service, a chance to increase revenue and should hopefully mean less tears on Christmas morning!
People use a search facility because they know what they are looking for - in fact, customers who do search for products are twice as likely to convert.
Yet, 70% of e-commerce sites require users to use the exact wording of the product listing when searching. This leads to a massive disconnect, with customer who use even just slight variants not finding the relevant products, or worse, no products at all.
To avoid this, add search-related recommendations to common erroneous search terms, displaying the items that other people making the same mistakes went on to buy. For example, “People who searched for ‘Nikees’ went on to buy ‘Nikes’”.
The holiday season sees our letterboxes become an exciting place - holiday greetings and badly wrapped presents! But our virtual letterbox can be swamped with unwanted commerce mail.
To make sure your communications don’t go on the return-to-sender pile (along with that hideous hat from Aunt Mildred), make sure to tailor them.
In the same way that a handwritten envelope will pique someone’s interest, so will a personalised email! In fact, Nosto's personalised triggered emails have an average click-through rate 10x higher than the industry standard - so don’t just give your emails a festive make-over but also include highly relevant products recommendations to inspire return visits to your online store.
It can be hard to stand out in the world of social advertising at the best of times, but with the holiday sales competition will be hotting up. Take your store right to the heart of the social media conversation, with products and offers that are automatically tailored according to users' past browsing and buying behaviour, and deliver them directly into their news feed.
Compared to 'static-one-size-fits-all' ads, automated and dynamic product ads can generate performance improvements of up to 400%.
Whether you are attracting new customers with best-seller items, or retargeting old customers with personal re-engagement products, the result is the same: dynamic Facebook content that produces higher conversion rates, larger order values and happier customers.
The majority of sales are lost due to undecided, hesitant buyers. But with time-limited special offers and one-time discounts, you can create the sense of urgency needed to encourage customers to act now. Which, in this crucial season, is exactly what you need them to do!
Choose whether to target new customers, convert abandoning shoppers, or maximise revenue from those that came from a paid advertising campaign. Whatever your target audience, personalised offers are one thing on everyone’s Christmas wishlist!
So there you have it, everything you need to keep you in the holiday spirit this season! To find out more about personalisation and how it can help your business, download Nosto’s ‘Introduction to Personalization’.
