Make it Personal: 2 Brilliant Ways to Engage Online Shoppers – eShipper

Imran Kermalli
Imran Kermalli Apr 05, 2016 • 3 min read
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It's no secret that shoppers who personally relate to a retail site are more likely to make a purchase. According to The Huffington Post, " 70% of consumers want your eCommerce store to give them a more personalized shopping experience."

Does your company effectively engage online shoppers?

But with customers located across the globe, it may be difficult to determine specific customer needs. Do some customers prefer courier services or drop-off locations? How many of your customers require international shipping options? Are customers leaving your site due to limited delivery options?

By understanding your customer's habits you are able to personalize your site. Here are two ways to make your customer analytics meaningful.

MultiChannel Merchant predicted that actionable analytics would be one of the gamechanging trends for eCommerce in 2016. The reason?

Understanding how your customer engages with your site in real-time provides you with a window into their personal behaviors. Once these behaviors are noted, site customization improves. Positive behaviors are encouraged while negative behaviors, such as bounce rates, are better understood and remedied. For example, "with real-time, actionable eCommerce analytics tied to customer engagement, you can see that people bounce when they have a problem."

In other words, if you notice that customers tend to leave the site when shipping information is displayed, then using features like surveys and dialogue boxes will provide an opportunity to engage the customer. Customers are given the opportunity to explain their reasons behind the behavior. Then merchants can work to ease the pain point.

But, how do you set up these personalization options? One feature to look for is heatmapping. 

When it comes to determining which site features lead to high bounce rates, features like heat mapping help vendors hone in on trouble spots.  One vendor noted that focusing on hotspots provided a focused way to resolve issues. Their business learned that customers were experiencing issues with Internet Explorer. In this instance, once site issues were resolved, conversions increased by 30%.

If you learn that customers are leaving the site because there are no international shipping options, then you have the opportunity to personalize the site by including shipping options that are suitable for those customers.

By harnessing meaningful analytics, you can increase customer personalization and increase customer retention.   

For more information about customized shipping options and personalized eCommerce, please contact us.

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