How to sell more products using quizzes and the power of personalization

What if you could be more like Amazon and offer just the right products at the right time to personalize your product recommendations in an almost creepy way? If you could do that, you'd experience an immediate 7.8% increase in sales, you'd also have a much better understanding of your customers, and your boss would definitely give you a thumbs-up. This all sounds amazing, except for one problem - you are not Amazon, you don't have thousands of engineers to work on perfecting every single aspect of your personalization program. Most likely you also don't have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to build personalization into your product CMS, and you are a marketer, so doing any coding yourself is incredibly daunting. Trust me, I've been there. Which is why what I'm going to show you today is so…

Using the right technology is key to optimising multi-channel retail strategy

Understanding the full impact online activity is having on offline sales has become something of a holy grail amongst marketers. Online advertising platforms, whilst bringing far greater measurability for those customers who click and convert online, cannot yet integrate all offline sales that have been influenced by web activity. It’s certainty a pressing issue. According to a Forrester study, more than 50 percent of U.S. offline retail sales will be influenced by the Internet by 2017; a practice known as webrooming. Those web-influenced sales will also rise to $1.8 trillion, up from $1.2 trillion in 2012 – to put that into perspective, total ecommerce sales alone are set to reach $370 billion by 2017. Another study also charts the rise of the showroomer: those who browse in-store before making a purchase online. There are multiple reasons why consumers might engage in…

What a difference a CMS makes

Wex have been a leader online camera retailer for over a decade, benefiting handsomely from the rise of eCommerce since their founding in 1997. But with over 17,000 products, a clunky interface built on brittle code and a lack of mobile responsiveness, the current site had seen better days. Starting to look outdated, and losing traffic due to Googles 'Mobbilegeddon' algorithm update, the site was in desperate need of a significant update. By working with CMS provider Episerver they were able to greatly improve the design and aesthetic whilst maintaining elements of the interface popular with customers.

The Problem

Wex's previous site was very busy, with competing calls to action and offers. The code it is built on is poorly designed and hard to maintain. This was standing in the way of the businesses goals and leads to frustrated users. Worse still, the site is not mobile responsive and there…

When used effectively, Personalisation based on Geo-targeting can be a powerful way to increase your conversion rate

People arrive at your website from a variety of different locations. This means they will have different nationalities, languages, currencies, climates and even cultural expectations. Geographic targeting allows a website to render content that is personalized to the location of the visitor. In other words, it determines the exact locality of your visitor, and then dynamically tailors the content on your website to be more meaningful to that shopper. The benefits of this are immense. Below are just a few examples of how geo-targeting can improve the visitor experience for your Ecommerce site.

1. Display Products Relevant to the Local Climate and Culture

Altering the type of products displayed depending on where the customer is from is a technique widely used by many online retailers. For example, take a clothing store that delivers to customers in the USA. Because…

Personalisation is no longer a luxury reserved for the big players in e-commerce

While Amazon continues to lead the way, a personalised shopping experience has now become an expectation for the savvy customer. And, with a plethora of automated personalisation tools available, it has never been easier for retailers to employ big data in their quest to deliver personalised content.

There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that personalisation is now a crucial component of an effective digital marketing strategy. Websites employing personalisation are likely to see higher numbers of conversions, AOVs, and improved customer loyalty. And yet, there is still a large number of retailers who are stuck in the personalisation slow lane, who are yet to fully explore the opportunities offered by targeted segmentation.

In particular, there is one often overlooked area in which personalisation can be incredibly effective - customer retention. …

Techniques to optimise your ecommerce sites for higher conversions and increased social media engagement

Creating an ecommerce website from scratch can be daunting. The task of creating, populating and launching the site is one thing, but launching it in such a competitive space is another. To begin with, you’re probably not going to compete with a 163 million page site like Amazon. This ecommerce giant has taken years of nurturing and development to get to where it is today and consistently dominates the online space. Instead, you need to start small; find methods of harnessing the small pool of users available to you and capitalise on any quick win opportunities out there. Here are 5 ecommerce tips to help you get started with:

1- Be conversion led from the get-go

Striking the balance between being design-focused and being conversion-focused is a tricky consideration to get right for any ecommerce…

Taking control of your online store to stay competitive

By customizing online stores, merchants are getting much more extensive business opportunities. Of course, it's quite difficult and sometimes rather expensive to customize your own web store, but looking at possible gains we can definitely say that it's worth doing. It doesn't matter whether you will adjust a site on your own or hire a professional developer for this purpose, remember that customization gives you the opportunity to take a competitive edge on the tough ecommerce market. Currently, there are plenty of well-known web stores that impress people with their style, design, functionality, speed and advanced technologies used. So what should a new vendor to begin with? It isn't necessary to order full-fledged customization at the very start (though highly desirable) - you can just go with a single or couple of specific options that will allow you to stand out.

Customizing your ecommerce…

The growth of omni-channel marketing will only make personalisation more important

It probably won’t come as huge surprise that many organisations whether B2C or B2B still don’t engage in even the most basic levels of personalisation in their engagement marketing activities. But as we move (some faster than others) from a multi-channel to an omni-channel ecommerce experience, personalisation triggered by the behaviour of the customer and not just their name has in many respects become the most important element in the optimisation of the customer journey.

How many emails do your receive claiming to be private and confidential but are addressed ‘Dear Occupier’ or ‘Dear Customer’. It does nothing to trigger the desire to act, other than to hit delete, as I know that the content is likely to be neither private confidential nor indeed…

Are the myths about deploying web personalisation tools holding you back?

Personalization has been causing major ripples in the digital ocean for many years. Most notably, Amazon pioneered and leveraged the technique in their successful quest for retail domination. Now, they enjoy 30% of their revenue alone through their skilful use of personalized product recommendations. Similarly, whether choosing a movie on Netflix, or flicking through your social media news feed, you'll find personalized content served at every turn. The benefits are indisputable. Research by Forrester found personalization to be the top priority for 55% of retailers. Similarly, it was found to be this year's top digital priority for B2C marketers. An effective personalization strategy is now widely recognised as essential to reaching the top global levels of conversion. And it's not just the marketers who agree. Another interesting survey revealed that 83% of consumers themselves want to receive a personalized cross-channel experience. Yet,…

Website visitors do not want obvious personalisation as much as they would like to believe something is personal

The chances are you have received an email addressed to “Dear [First Name]” or similar? Email marketers appear to forget to include our actual names from time to time. It is annoying and we all laugh at it, realising that the company involved has failed to populate its database properly or set up its email software correctly. However, do we care? Are we bothered if the personalisation of emails is poorly carried out? Ask professional marketers and there’s a good chance that they’ll tell you that personalisation is essential. Indeed, according to a report from Monetate, 94% of businesses believe that proper personalisation is “critical” to success. Meanwhile, less than one in every six firms felt that they were getting a return…