This Is How Radical eCommerce Homepage Personalization Looks Like!
Explore our vision for transformative homepage personalization in eCommerce, offering a glimpse into the future of the personalized online shopping experience.
About the Author:
Co-founder of Datacop, agency that fulfils marketing operation roles in large eCommerce companies such as OluKai, Melin, Roark, Living Spaces, Visual Comfort and Company, Dedoles and others.
Today, I'd like to discuss an ambitious use case we haven't deployed yet.
Why focus on this use case?
We believe it exemplifies the vast potential in today's world for personalizing the shopping experience and reflects our broader thoughts on personalization strategies.
To visually represent this use case, I've selected the JAK Shoes retailer as an example. Disclaimer: We have no affiliation with JAK. However, I wanted to give them a nod since I find myself browsing their website quite often. Their sneakers boast a sleek design, and I'm seriously contemplating purchasing my first pair.
With that said, let's delve into today's topic!
Radical eCommerce Homepage Personalization
Typically, the majority of eCommerce stores offer a uniform shopping experience to all customer segments upon entering the store.
When people hear the term "website personalization," they often associate it with just a couple of elements on the website that can be dynamically modified based on the customer's known information. This usually includes snippets like product recommendations, as shown in the example below:
From a technical standpoint, it is feasible to implement more extensive personalization strategies that do not compromise the loading speed of a website.
In this brief post, we will demonstrate how we would have crafted homepage experiences for three distinct customer segments commonly found in every eCommerce store:
First-time visitors: Individuals who are entering the store for the first time.
Returning visitors who previously added a product to their cart but have not yet made a purchase.
Returning customers: Individuals who have already made a purchase with our brand.
First-time Visitor Homepage Experience:
Picture this scenario: You own a small brick-and-mortar shop where you also work as the cashier.
Within the first thirty minutes of opening, two customers walk in. One is a face you've never seen, while the other is a loyal customer who's made purchases over five times.
Would you interact with them differently?
We're inclined to think that most would say 'yes'. We concur. So we put our “marketer” hat on and considered how to best engage someone visiting our store for the first time. What information would we want to present? Are there questions we'd want to ask them?
For a newcomer, a brief introduction about the store seems apt. Rather than diving into specific products, we'd likely showcase the broad categories of items available. Obtaining their contact information would be a bonus.
This sets the stage for the kind of website experience we envision:
Returning Visitor Homepage Experience:
Now, envision a scenario where a first-time visitor to our store showed keen interest in a particular product but didn’t make a purchase. The very next day, they return.
In the eCommerce landscape, this is akin to a customer who adds items to their cart but abandons it before checkout, only to revisit the website later. How impactful would it be to tailor the homepage to reflect this?
Returning Customer Homepage Experience:
Finally, consider the loyal, returning customer. Is there a need to reintroduce the brand to someone so familiar? And is it necessary to request their email again if they've already shared it with us?
Given our knowledge of their preferences, we can tailor our product offerings with much greater precision. Therefore, for such customer, the homepage experience might be tailored as follows:
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Additionally, if you're part of an eCommerce company and are interested in implementing a solution like this, we'd love to connect. Discussing such use-cases genuinely energizes us, so we'd be thrilled to delve deeper with you. Don't hesitate to schedule a meeting here!