Personalized Product Recommendations: Why Do You Need Them?

While everyone thought that the pandemic was going to slow enterprises down, e-commerce is proving otherwise as online businesses are becoming increasingly competitive. Because of this, there’s no denying that the competition has become more intense since last year. And to keep up with your competitors, you need to pull out all the stops.

There are many ways to remain a leading contender in the race to high search engine rankings and sales – be it through doing up website surveys to churning out trendy blog topics. One of those is personalized product recommendations.

A lot of consumers nowadays expect brands to know who they are and what they want. This is why brands that deliver personalized marketing campaigns are the only ones that continue to thrive despite the devastation that COVID-19 has brought upon the entire world.

Because of the increasing demand for personalization, this quality of service is no longer optional. It has become a necessity – an essential search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that creates impactful customer experiences that increase your conversion rate, which comes to the point of you having to consider engaging SEO services if need be.

And one way to provide a tailored customer experience is to provide personalized product recommendations.

What are personalized product recommendations?

Picture this: you open an online retailer’s site and type in the words “black crop top” into the search bar. When the search results show up on your screen, you also see other products, like pants or shoes that you can pair a black crop top with, under “You might also like.”

Basically, the website is telling you that you might also like the set of products that would look great with the item that you’re searching for.

This is what personalized product recommendations are all about.

Personalized product recommendations do not only work with products. Netflix is one good example of how to effectively use this technique to increase sales. Netflix recommends movies and shows based on the previous movies and shows you’ve watched. This has made a lot of people hooked on the biggest streaming service to date.

There are many things you can recommend to a customer based on the following:

• Complementary products
• Most viewed products
• Best selling items
• Trending items
• Featured products

Why do you need personalized product recommendations?

Yes, implementing personalized product recommendations on your site requires a lot of time and money. But the benefits it offers far outweigh the immediate cost.

·      Improve user engagement

As soon as a visitor lands on your site, they will immediately search for the product or information they are looking for.

If they don’t find the exact content they are looking for, they will very likely leave your site and go somewhere else. That can be a wasted conversion and sale, which is something that you don’t want to happen.

To keep your visitors engaged, you should recommend products based on their customer persona. Engaged visitors tend to stay longer and the longer they stay, the lower the bounce rate, which translates to your website ranking higher on search engines.

·      Increase conversion

When a visitor spends more than five minutes browsing your site and adding certain items to their wish list or cart, you can safely say that they are in a highly engaged state. This means that you don’t have to try so hard to convince them to continue the customer journey and check out the items they’ve been adding to their cart. This also means that this is the perfect time to offer them products that they won’t be able to resist.

Essentially, personalized product recommendations are all about putting the right product in front of the right customer at the right time.

·      Make the buying process easier

80% of consumers say that they like it when the brands they follow send them emails with personalized product recommendations based on their previous purchases. This just shows that a lot of consumers make personalization quite a big deal.

By recommending products that are relevant to your audience, you are making their decision-making easier and thus, making the buying process simpler and quicker for them. This is because they don’t need to scroll through hundreds of products to find what they are looking for or may be interested in because you’ve already done the hard work for them.

·      Retain abandoned customers

More than 50% of consumers say that they often feel overwhelmed by choice and end up being frustrated. When that happens, they will very likely abandon their search altogether and go somewhere else. Similarly, prospects who are having a hard time looking for the right product tend to get easily distracted by your competitors.

To win back these potential customers, you need to take advantage of personalized product recommendations. This prevents any frustration or distraction because your prospects are presented with products that are relevant to them and they are already interested in.

·      Increase customer spending

49% of consumers say that they have purchased a product that they did not intend to buy after they received a recommendation based on their previous purchase or preference.

If a customer is already purchasing from you, personalized product recommendations are an excellent way to encourage them to spend more. You can cross-sell based on a customer’s purchases. If they just checked out a pair of running shoes, for example, it would make sense to recommend a pair of leggings or other sports apparel to complete their outfit.

Another way of encouraging customers to spend a little more is by upselling. You can suggest upgrades on the product or service they are currently purchasing. Since buyers are highly engaged at this point, they are most likely primed to spend more.

·      Foster loyalty

Personalization, relevance, and timeliness make the buying experience for any customer a pleasant one. Because of this, customers will want to come back for repeat business. By continuously making their buying experience memorable for all the right reasons, your brand will soon become their brand of choice. And the more customers come back to your site, the more you will learn about them, allowing you to personalize your services for them even more. As a result, customers become happier and more loyal to you for a long time.

Conclusion

Taking advantage of personalized product recommendations to your online shop will help you get a leg up on the competition. Not only will this help you increase your conversion but this will also widen your customer base, which in turn can bring in more revenues.