If you’re looking for a way to boost sales and keep your product pages bookmarked longer, consider personalizing your products. These days, everything is available online, so you have to do everything possible to stand out. Personalized products leap off the page and into shopping carts faster than generic ones.
What does this mean for your business? Customization can open a universe of opportunities for your e-commerce site. Any physical product can incorporate graphics, colors, designs, and other details that set them apart. Learn more about this growing trend and why you should follow it.
What Is Product Personalization?
Product personalization involves customizing products in a way that matters to your target audience. In the digital age, people are always looking for unique products and services to add value to their purchases. That’s true online and offline. However, it’s much easier to adopt personalization in the e-commerce realm as customers place their orders.
Thanks to advanced digital technology, you can bake customization into every step of the ordering process. This involves much more than displaying products in different colors and styles. There are major benefits to incorporating customization into your product line. Look no further than Rothy’s for examples of product personalization done well.
How Personalization Will Forge Future Trends
A recent Statista study projects that e-commerce sales will approach the $7 trillion mark by 2025. Customization can help shoppers differentiate between brands and give them a reason to keep coming back. Looking at the trendline, it looks like people will continue to search online for the items they need. The question is whether your company will implement sufficient personalization to coax them to your checkout pages.
Are you ready to tap into the benefits of personalization? Doing so can help your products stand out and fuel growth for your online business. In short, e-commerce businesses that embrace customization will increase both visibility and sales.
Four Reasons to Personalize Your Products
Customers love customization and it can give you important insights into those who buy your products. Review the following reasons that personalization pays off.
Win over new and existing customers
Allowing consumers to have a say in the design, style, color, and other details of the products they use goes a long way. This philosophy can help you build rapport with new and existing customers alike. Plus, adding unique features encourages shoppers to talk about your brand.
Give your customers the gift of exclusivity and elevate your brand with personalized elements that make shopping more fun. Whether choosing items for themselves or someone else, customers will feel closer to your brand when they have a significant say in what ends up on their doorsteps.
Keep customers happy and they won’t go anywhere
A product customization strategy lets customers know that you care about what they think and like. This can play a major role in building loyalty and increasing your retention and reorder rates. You can also reach out to dormant clients with teasers about new products and how they can make them their own. More importantly, happy customers are more likely to bring family and friends into the fold of your brand.
Increase sales (higher revenues, anyone?)
According to a Deloitte study, 20% of consumers are willing to pay 20% more for a unique item. From shirts to shoes to bikes, customers happily dig deeper into their digital wallets to own a personalized product. In the days of two-day shipping, it might surprise you to learn that customers are willing to wait a bit longer for a stand-out item they can personalize to their tastes and needs.
How can you implement personalization in your e-commerce business? Set up a focus group of current and former customers. Find out what keeps them around or what drives them over to your competitors. Then, incorporate customization where it will have the greatest impact.
Find out what makes your customers tick
When customers put a lot of thought into digital orders, they feel a sense of pride and satisfaction in the final products. You can use these decision points to gain insights into what your customers love, and what they don’t. This information can help you design superior products and expand your customization options in the right direction. For example, if you provide healthcare products and you know that a segment of your audience is diabetic, you could suggest to them new items like glucose monitoring device that could help them in their day-to-day glucose tracking.
Think of it this way. When you go to Netflix or your favorite streaming app, you expect to see your favorite shows at the top of the list. You can also view suggested shows similar to what you’ve seen in the past. In the same way, you can give your customers a personal experience every time they come to your e-commerce site.
Best Practices for Product Personalization
Do you want to tailor your products according to customer preferences? Start by researching e-commerce sites that do this well. For example, Uquora groups products together in a user-friendly way that invites customers to explore the aisles of their e-commerce site. You’ll want to peruse your competitor’s pages to glean important insights into how you can make it easier for customers to get the exact product they need.
When you give control to your customers, it enhances the online experience. However, true personalization pays off at a crucial moment. There’s a reason people love to watch unboxing videos. How will your customers feel when they unbox your products? Personalization is all about growing brand awareness on the infinitesimal scale of customer engagement. That starts with the ordering experience.
Bringing It All Together for Your Brand
Join the trend toward personalization or become a trendsetter by making your ordering experience memorable and personal. From increasing your insight into your customers’ preferences to increasing your sales, there’s no downside to customization done correctly.
The best part? You could hire expensive consultants to tear down your products and reassemble them into something you think shoppers will love. However, the best consultants aren’t on the payroll, they are in your customer records and on your e-commerce site every day. If you listen to your customers, you’ll learn all you need to launch customized products that sell themselves.
Megan Isola
Megan Isola holds a Bachelor of Science in Hospitality and a minor in Business Marketing from Cal State University Chico. She enjoys going to concerts, trying new restaurants, and hanging out with friends.