Who thought that eCommerce would ever replace strolling in the mall? Online shopping has become part of our daily activities, and here it stays.
The more people spend time online to purchase products, the more pressurizing it becomes for eCommerce businesses to improve the customer experience. Brands now understand that customers look for customized services, and a one-size-fits-all strategy does not work well. They pay more attention to eCommerce personalization to offer better online customer experiences.
If you are looking for eCommerce personalization tools for your business, you are at the right place. In this article, we will discuss what eCommerce personalization software is, the top personalization platforms on the market, and the features eCommerce experts look for when choosing a platform. So, let’s dive in:
What is an eCommerce Personalization Platform?
Personalization software is important for any eCommerce business. It helps in ensuring that all marketing messages (such as website copy, product recommendations, pop-ups, or emails) are relevant to each customer.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are used to understand customer data and develop the appropriate content. All of this is fully automated; hence, it allows businesses to focus on other tasks while the software does the personalization.
Customers are more likely to buy from a brand that delivers a personalized experience. Therefore, any business aiming to grow effectively needs to scale its personalization efforts.
eCommerce brands use personalization tools to:
- Recommend products most suited to a customer’s interests
- Improve product discovery at all stages of the buyer journey through search, page content, pop-ups, and lead forms
- Retarget customers across multiple channels: email, ads, SMS
- Segment the audience to create various campaigns that reach different groups
- Improve conversion rates with smart A/B testing to find out what really works
7 Best Personalization Tools for eCommerce
In the fiercely competitive market, eCommerce personalization helps you keep your business relevant to the target audience and stand out from others.
Research says that 71% of consumers expect personalized shopping experiences from brands, and 76% would switch if they don’t like the experience. So, you need the right personalization tools at your disposal to ensure success.
Let’s look at the top eCommerce personalization tools available on the market:
Nosto is designed to enhance your business’s shopping experience through precise personalization. It allows you to customize your website content, product categories, recommendations, and pop-ups, making your online store more engaging for your customers.
With Nosto, you can create omnichannel campaigns that include email marketing, mobile apps, and in-store personalization. This ensures a consistent shopping experience across multiple platforms, which is particularly beneficial for local brands or those with an app.
Key Features:
- Accurate product recommendations
- Personalized product categories
- Website content personalization (including copy, design, and pop-ups)
- Deep customer segmentation and insights
- A/B testing and optimization
Pros:
- A comprehensive tool for personalizing the online shopping experience
- Optimizes conversion rates, increasing sales and customer retention
- Wide range of personalization features for various purposes
- Machine-learning algorithm for an effective shopping experience
- Supports omnichannel marketing (email, mobile apps, in-store)
Cons:
- Requires support to set up
- Needs technical knowledge to utilize effectively
- Limited ability to personalize language and currency for international brands
Best for:
Nosto is ideal for fast-growing eCommerce stores that are beginning to establish an omnichannel eCommerce presence, both locally and digitally. It doesn’t just optimize your website; it also personalizes your campaigns in your mobile app and enhances the in-store customer experience.
MoEngage is a robust customer engagement platform designed to boost sales, retain customers, and drive business growth.
With its advanced technology, MoEngage helps personalize your website and map out your customer’s journey in detail. It also features geo-fencing to send specific messages to customers near your location.
Key Features:
- Personalized product recommendations.
- Website personalization (pop-ups, notifications, banners).
- Location-based personalization for local businesses. Triggering messages when your customers enter and leave your desired radius.
- Advanced segmentation (affinity, RFM, and custom).
- Supports multiple marketing channels such as mobile push, email campaigns, in-app messaging, onsite messaging, cards, SMS, and web push.
Pros:
- Ability to map out customer journeys and create automated, omnichannel personalization campaigns.
- Proprietary AI (named Sherpa) for smart personalization and conversion rate optimization.
- Local businesses can send personalized messages to nearby potential customers.
- Top-notch analytics to understand conversion funnels, customer behavior, and pathways. Includes source analytics and integration with business analytics tools.
- Effective and diverse API integrations.
Cons:
- Requires third-party integrations with CRMs, vendor tools, and business intelligence, making the onboarding process complex.
- Stores data in third-party public clouds, potentially leading to cybersecurity issues.
- It can be slow when loading dashboard analytics and large segmentations due to heavy data.
Best for:
MoEngage is a fantastic choice for well-established brands or local retailers aiming to undergo digital transformation. This tool helps embrace omnichannel marketing, allowing you to maximize your reach and connect with customers more effectively.
Clerk.io is an excellent personalization platform tailored for smaller brands looking to start with personalization. It offers customizable product recommendations, a behavior-based search engine, and integrated email marketing.
Clerk.io’s proprietary AI technology, ClerkCore, ensures highly accurate predictions and integrates seamlessly with popular eCommerce platforms.
Key Features:
- Behavior-based eCommerce search engine.
- Personalized product recommendations.
- Automated email marketing with strong hyper-targeting.
- Advanced audience segmentation.
- A proprietary AI platform for accurate personalization and data efficiency.
Pros:
- AI-powered advanced A/B testing, ideal for conversion rate optimization (CRO).
- Enhances internal search, making it easy for visitors to find products, thus increasing sales and engagement.
- Profitable product recommendations tailored to the right customers.
- Excellent customer support for learning the tool.
- Email automation and personalization for highly-segmented campaigns.
Cons:
- The UI isn’t very beginner-friendly, requiring time to learn the platform.
- Personalization options are limited to search, recommendations, email, and segmentation, lacking omnichannel capabilities.
- Payment options are limited to credit cards only, which may be inconvenient for some businesses.
Best for:
Clerk.io is an excellent option for smaller eCommerce sites. It’s particularly beneficial if you have an extensive catalog and struggle with conversion rates. It ensures that the right product is shown to the right customers, boosting your chances of making sales.
WebEngage is a comprehensive platform that goes beyond website personalization to help D2C brands connect with their customers across nine marketing channels, including app notifications, SMS, email, and WhatsApp.
Its data platform collects and integrates customer data, segmenting the audience to provide detailed insights for data-driven decisions.
Key Features:
- On-site web personalization.
- Customer segmentation (including live, static, RFM).
- A customer data platform.
- Omnichannel marketing (app notifications, emails, SMS, WhatsApp, retargeting).
- “Campaign orchestration” to map the customer lifecycle and create targeted campaigns.
- Extensive performance analytics (product, revenue, funnels, cohorts, and more).
Pros:
- Comprehensive tools to support personalized omnichannel campaigns, enhancing brand awareness.
- Detailed mapping of the entire customer journey.
- Ability to retarget previous visitors.
- Intuitive UI that is easy to learn.
- Proactive and instant customer support.
Cons:
- The large size of the software can lead to slow loading times, especially for dashboards and segment creation.
- Limited access to user-level data in analytics makes it difficult to attribute revenue or conversions to specific segments and users.
- Lack of educational content to learn the product without relying on support.
Best for:
WebEngage is perfect for enterprise-level or well-funded direct-to-consumer (D2C) businesses looking to enhance their results through omnichannel marketing. To fully leverage the features, your business should have a substantial budget allocated to multiple marketing channels.
Yieldify simplifies digital personalization with an all-in-one platform that caters to all your needs. Utilizing AI and machine learning helps you create data-driven personalization, monitor performance, and gain actionable insights effortlessly.
Yieldify offers a wide range of tools to enhance the shopping experience, including A/B/n testing and email remarketing.
Key Features:
- Extensive personalization capabilities across multiple channels, such as promotions, recommendations, device-optimized messages, email marketing, social proof, lead generation, and source messaging.
- Robust audience segmentation and tagging.
- Site mapping for advanced personalization and tracking.
- A/B/n control testing to test more than two variations of a campaign.
- Proprietary AI and machine learning tools for data-driven decisions.
- Integration with eCommerce platforms, CRMs, analytics, email providers, SMS marketing tools, and more.
Pros:
- A wide variety of personalization tools and channels are used to boost conversion rates, sales, and overall revenue.
- User-friendly, even for marketing and design teams with no technical expertise.
- Clear and comprehensive analytics.
- Quick implementation of new ideas into live campaigns using helpful templates.
- Knowledgeable and responsive customer service.
- Seamless integration with various tools.
Cons:
- The campaign builder can slow down with complex campaigns.
- Limited options for personalized content, restricting creativity.
- Segmentation capabilities are less extensive compared to competitors.
Best for:
Yieldify suits online businesses and retailers of all sizes that need tailored solutions for growth. It combines automation and personalization to help you grow your business efficiently.
Bluecore is a multi-channel platform that integrates customer data and uses AI for personalized marketing.
It supports website, email, and ads, making it ideal for retailers aiming for an omnichannel approach to provide a tailored shopping experience.
Key Features:
- Personalized email campaigns for website bouncers, cart abandonment, birthday gifts, etc.
- Integration of customer data to optimize multi-channel campaigns.
- Fully automated platform for more profitable email campaigns.
- Audience syncing across website, SMS, Facebook, Google ads, direct mail, and offline.
- Multi-channel personalization for websites, email, SMS, and retargeting paid ads.
Pros:
- Proprietary AI for better audience understanding and communication.
- Personalized retargeting campaigns for paid ads, enhancing ROAS on Facebook Ads.
- Quick and efficient customer service.
- Integration of offline data for local retailers.
- Detailed analytics and data visualization.
- Excellent email marketing automation.
Cons:
- Complex setup process for campaigns and viewing opt-ins.
- The steep learning curve for non-technical users.
- Slow loading times under heavy workloads.
Best for:
Bluecore is ideal for retailers looking to adopt omnichannel marketing strategies to convert offline customers into engaged email list subscribers. This tool helps improve customer engagement and increases customer lifetime value through effective email marketing.
Qubit focuses on creating a personalized 1-on-1 shopping experience using deep learning technology.
It offers unique features such as “product badging,” “product insights,” and “social proofing,” along with cross-channel personalization for email and mobile apps.
Key Features:
- Smart product recommendations.
- 1-on-1 journey personalization.
- “Product badging” for social proof and adding badges to items.
- Personalized website content.
- Cross-channel personalization with emails, mobile apps, and offline.
- Weekly product insights with actionable tips.
Pros:
- Wide range of tools for personalizing the online shopping experience with advanced segmentation, A/B testing, retargeting, and more.
- Strong AI for extensive personalization options, providing a bespoke customer experience.
- Reliable customer service for strategic collaboration.
- Easy-to-use interface with a variety of templates for quick testing of new ideas.
- Efficient analytics and data visualization.
- Integration with numerous platforms, business analytics tools, and email service providers.
Cons:
- No real-time metrics; campaign performance updates take a few minutes.
- The software may require a technical team for effective usage.
- Limited resources for learning advanced features.
Best for:
Qubit is designed to scale eCommerce brands, focusing on advanced website personalization. It is particularly useful for brands that have a significant portion of their online audience in their email list, helping to drive better engagement and conversion rates.
Features to Look For in an eCommerce Personalization Software
So, you have a list of eCommerce personalization platforms with different capabilities. But how do you choose the right one for your business?
Well, choosing an ideal tool for eCommerce personalization depends on your business needs and future goals. However, you must ensure some essential features in your software to ensure it can connect your eCommerce platform with the audience effectively. Here’s what you should look for:
Dynamic Content Delivery
Imagine visiting your favorite website every time to see the same content. It gets exhausting, doesn’t it? Dynamic content delivery changes this by giving you messages that go according to what you’re interested in right now.
Picture a news website where the headlines change as per your browsing history. For example, if you like seeing technology content, it would present you with tech-centered headlines. This will keep you engaged with fresh and relevant content.
It can also benefit eCommerce sites by adjusting the content with the analysis of user behavior and preferences. This means your potential customer will see products or information that matter to them, making their browsing experience more engaging.
Importance of dynamic content delivery:
- Keeps users engaged with relevant, personalized content.
- Improves User Experience by displaying interest-based content to the users.
- Chances of conversion increase with products that resonate with the visitors.
Customized Product Recommendations
Online shopping nowadays has become overwhelming, and this is because of the abundance of choices at our fingertips. Tailored product recommendations make it easier to go through the process and shop for products in a much easier and more efficient way.
Think of it like having a personal shopper: suppose you are looking to buy a new wallet; in that case, the salesperson may recommend a few based on your style and preferences. Online stores can do the same with their tailored recommendations. Such suggestions are based on the user’s past purchases, browsing behavior, and demographics.
Importance of tailored product recommendations:
- Makes shopping more enjoyable and less overwhelming.
- Saves precious browsing time by showcasing only relevant product range
- Personalizes options and increases chances of purchase.
Customer Segmentation
Ever wish you could talk directly to some of your customers about introducing a new product or having a sale? eCommerce customer segmentation lets you do just that. You will be able to understand the needs and preferences of each group if you segment your customer base into different groups of customers sharing common characteristics.
Let’s say you’re promoting your beauty company’s semi-annual sale via SMS. Customer segmentation allows you to personalize the messages; for example, a group might receive information about eye makeup discounts, while another on lip care offers. Every dollar spent goes toward targeted marketing and reaches out to the right shopper who’s most likely to convert.
Importance of customer segmentation:
- Provides more significant insight into customer preferences.
- Enables targeted marketing campaigns.
- Increases conversion rates with relevant offers.
Predictive Analytics
Personalizing your marketing according to the customers’ actions is amazing, but what if you could predict those actions before they happen? That is where predictive analytics comes in. Some sophisticated algorithms use predictive analytics to forecast future customer behaviors, thereby enabling you to anticipate needs even before they arise.
Imagine sending a reminder to your customers to buy more dog food before they have none left. With predictive analytics, you can send customers a personalized discount code just in time. It’s like having a crystal ball that helps you predict and meet your customers’ needs.
Importance of predictive analytics:
- Predict what customers need before they know it
- Presents customers with timely, relevant offers
- Enhances customer satisfaction by exceeding expectations.
FAQs on eCommerce Personalization Tools
Q1. How is personalization done in eCommerce?
eCommerce personalization is the process of providing personalized interactions and experiences for online shoppers. Personalization may be based on a customer’s past purchases, browsing history, geographic location, language, and other personal information.
Q2. What are the key methods of eCommerce personalization?
Some top methods of personalization in eCommerce include recommending customized products consumers browse, visitor-specific mail campaigns, dynamic pricing, customized landing pages, and personalized search results. Other effective techniques include personalized content, like product details and images, and different individual promotions and discounts.
Q3. How do you create an eCommerce personalization strategy?
Collect and analyze customers’ data to understand their preferences and behaviors. Define clear goals, such as increasing the conversion or average order value. Segment your audience with defined criteria such as purchase history or demographics. Apply relevant personalization techniques and technologies according to the goals and resources of your brand. Roll out and test using A/B testing to see what works, and then refine your approach.
Conclusion
eCommerce personalization software can be a game-changer for your online business. By tailoring the shopping experience to each potential customer, you can boost engagement, increase sales, and build customer loyalty. From personalized product recommendations to customized marketing messages, the possibilities are endless.
Investing in the right personalization tools can set your business apart from the competition. Not only will you meet your customers’ needs more effectively, but you’ll also create a more enjoyable and efficient shopping experience. Remember, the key is to start small, test what works best for your audience, and scale up from there.
Do you still need help with personalizing your eCommerce store for customers? Discuss your needs with our experts today!
