The SEO Experts Guide to Creating a Personalised Customer Experience for your Ecommerce Store

The boom in online retail sales is encouraging for eCommerce store owners who are able to bring an exciting range of products faster to the market at significantly lower prices than their offline counterparts.

In saying so, the low barrier to entry for starting an eCommerce store has resulted in the industry becoming increasingly competitive. Buying cycles are getting longer as customers are habitually shopping around. The days of impulse purchase have given way to customers reviewing products in-depth and checking out prices on competitor stores before making a purchase.

Customers now have more choice and power than before. The implication for eCommerce retailers is that they have to listen to the individual in order to attract, convert, retain and optimise traffic to their site.

One of the shifts that SEO experts recommend for achieving these objectives is to create a personalised customer experience for their eCommerce store.

Personalisation, at its most basic level, is the delivery of tailored content and experiences across every point of the customer journey such as greeting each customer individually with the right content, at the right time and through the right channel.

Personalisation is a web marketing services strategy that is highly relevant to every part of the sales funnel from customer acquisition to conversion and retention.

It allows retailers to actually listen to their customers, learning their likes and dislikes. It allows them to serve each customer according to their individual wants and needs.

Shoppers nowadays want and expect personalisation. It is no longer an optional extra but is a key component of a successful eCommerce business.

When applied correctly, seo experts indicate that personalisation has helped their clients double conversion rates and increase sales by over 10%.

Attracting Targeted Customers through Personalisation

Most eCommerce retailers use a blanket approach when advertising online by trying to yell louder about their special offers than their competitors instead of using personalised ads.

According to research conducted by Adlucent, 71% of respondents preferred ads which were tailored to their shopping habits and interests. The study showed that when customers saw an ad featuring an unknown brand, they were almost twice as likely to click on it if the message was aligned with their preferences.

The research also revealed that 44% of respondents readily agreed to give up vital information like their name, email address and home address in order to receive more personalised advertising.

By personalising your social media ads you will be able to drive more qualified traffic to your store and get the customers you want shopping for your products.

Personalised ads behave differently from traditional ads because they look beyond gender and location taking into consideration what specific target audiences are actually interested in.

You can also use the data gathered from current customers to attract lookalike audiences. These audiences are new customers with highly similar profiles to those of your actual customers, ensuring you are reaching your ideal customers effectively.

Attracting customers through personalisation makes paid advertising more effective since traffic to your site is more highly qualified and therefore more likely to convert.

Converting Customers Through Personalisation

SEO experts believe that personalisation helps their eCommerce store owners make shopping more fun, convenient and specific to the individual. This ensures that the customer finds exactly what they are looking for and completes a purchase.

Think of personalisation as an automated personal shopping assistant for the online world. By automating real-time on-site recommendations for individuals, you are helping your customers quickly find products they want.

This can be everything from displaying cross-selling and up-selling recommendations based on the individual shopper preferences and behaviour to showcasing your store selection through bestsellers and much more.

Pop-ups are also a great way of increasing urgency and enticing the customer to complete a purchase. SEO experts have seen personalised behavioural pop-ups generate an average of 40% increase in conversion.

A major benefit of using personalisation to convert customers is that it significantly lowers barriers to a purchase. By making interesting items easy to find the chances of a purchase are significantly increased.

In addition, personalisation encourages customers to explore other items in your store, which increases the likelihood of a repeat purchase being made.

Finally, SEO experts use personalisation to create a sense of urgency that encourages customers to make a purchase for the fear of missing out on an offer that’s too enticing to resist.

Increasing Customer Retention Through Personalisation

The customer journey isn’t over when they leave your store. You can reach out to them through retargeting ads or personalised promotional emails.

Web marketing services providers believe that personalised emails improve conversion rates by 10% while personal re-engagement ads on Facebook can generate over 20 times the return on advertising spend.

Reaching out to your customers after they have left your store does not have to be intrusive in any way.

For instance, by tailoring your email marketing you are effectively approaching each individual customer with the items they find of most interest such as items based on their personal browsing or buying history.

Tailoring your email marketing can be done by adding a personalisation widget to your newsletters or setting up personalised triggered emails that are automatically sent out based on a certain preference.

You can remind customers of their past interests, offer something new related to past purchases or even entice them back to your store by showcasing your new selection. Retargeting your customers on social media with items they might have left in their shopping cart or with items they’ve shown a great interest in, is an effective way to cut through the noise and reach your customers in a media they engage in for several hours a day.

Using personalisation to attract, convert and retain customers is a strategy that’s increasingly being offered by SEO experts as a part of the web marketing services they offer to customers. It entices repeat visits to the store and also increases brand awareness. The key to success in online marketing is to look at your customers as individuals, not just numbers.