With the growth of eCommerce, store owners and marketers are continuously searching for new tools and features that help users convert as efficiently as possible.
One of the clearest trends for improving conversion rate, average order value, and user experience has been personalization through email, on-site, site search, or other channels.
90% of leading marketers believe that personalization significantly contributes to business profitability. In fact, 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them.
The most concerning part? Users not given a personalized experience tend to turn to other large eCommerce providers, like Amazon, to fulfil their needs.
Why? Because personalization, time and time again, has proven to work. This is because it can:
- Help curb information overload
- Help users get a better deal
- Make the purchasing process simple and faster
- Can provide additional information (which they would normally receive in person)
Now, personalization is more powerful at scale, but smaller traffic (and revenue) stores can still get value. I'd just say don't worry about personalization until you're at least at $10k/month or 10k visitors, and even then, you can wait until 50k monthly visitors and be just fine. The bottom line is about the increase in your on-site conversion, and if that is what you need, you'll want to check out this list of recommended personalization tools. Not only can they help you customize each user's experience, but they can also simplify the user's journey by providing unique one-on-one experiences.
Types of Personalization
Personalization is more than product recommendations or using someone's {firstname}. Multiple points can be personalized throughout your customer's journey. Some of the most common personalizations include:
- Predictive Personalization
- On-site Dynamic Content
- On-site Notifications
- Search personalization
- Dynamic email content
- Product recommendations
The Shortlist of Best Personalization Tools for eCommerce:
Predictive Personalization
On-site Dynamic Content
On-site Notifications
Search Personalization
- Algolia
- Searchanise
Product Recommendation (and more)
Predictive Personalization
Predictive personalization is all about determining what your customers will do before they do it to serve them better. This ability to predict their behaviour and tailor your offerings, products, messaging, etc., to them across different touchpoints differs from standard segmentation and personalization tactics.
Because this information is based on insights revealed through your data, AI can use algorithms and machine learning to optimize and improve over time, creating more accurate predictions and allowing you to send even more targeted campaigns.
Examples of where you can utilize predictive personalization include:
- Segmentation
- Marketing campaigns
- Content
- Product recommendations
- Offers
Predictive personalization tools use your existing sales and behavioural data to deeply understand your customers' preferences and product/category affinity, helping you engage with them more effectively.
On-Site Content
Website personalization involves creating a personalized user experience based on various factors, such as geography, account information, consumer behavioural data, and more.
Instead of providing a broad, simplistic user experience, on-site content personalization can provide a unique experience tailored to that user's information that is on par with an in-person experience.
These personalizations can be made to assets such as:
- Banners
- Copy on product pages
- Calls-to-action
- Pop-ups
On-site content personalization is practical for businesses that receive a lot of traffic or have a more complex catalog, as users can be generally overwhelmed by the amount of information on a site.
By adding personalized banners, calls to action, or pop-ups triggered by behavioural data, users can be funnelled into a unique customer journey.
A few great personalization tools for this stage of the funnel are:
- JustUno is great for detailed segmentation and built-in product recommendations within pop-ups.
- Privy - stellar pop-up tool with its own email and SMS marketing solutions built-in for an all-in-one conversion optimization experience.
On-Site Notifications
The average website session duration is 2-3 minutes. With so little time to grab a user's attention, building a sense of urgency is key.
Various on-site notifications can be personalized to entice users to purchase or move further down the funnel. Some of these notifications include:
- Pop-up notifications
- Up-sells or cross-sells on cart and checkout pages
- Social proof
- Urgency notifications
These notifications are also dynamically built based on the user's browsing history, but they can also be built on product attributes, previous user data and inventory information.
A few tools for optimizing on-site notifications are:
- PushOwl - Send push notifications based on products in the cart, pages browsed, items in stock, and more.
- Fera - With Fera, you can add various social proof elements or notifications to pages based on region, browsing behaviour, products in the cart, etc.
Search Personalization
The search bar becomes an incredibly lucrative tool that can be leveraged for its dynamic content and user data.
Personalizing search is key if your business has a large product catalogue or several pages that can be considered valuable (like blog content).
With these search personalization tools, you can:
- Personalize search suggestions
- Provide search autocomplete
- Deliver product recommendations on typos.
- Upsell and cross-sell
- Deliver live price, in-stock status and product reviews.
By providing simple and personalized search functionality, businesses can drastically simplify the purchasing process, allowing users to find what they want quickly and effortlessly.
Algolia
Enterprise-level search tool
Algolia truly has some of the most advanced site search features available on the market. They cater to many larger retailers like Lacoste, Birchbox, and Under Armour. They've recently brought their plans to the mass market by offering simpler self-serve options.
Features
- Advanced Rule Builder
- Instant Search
- Split Testing Search Results
- Visual Editor
- Geographic Search
Pricing
They have a free community tool, but to integrate with Shopify (or Magento), you must start with their $29/month plan. They charge based on operations (searches) and records. Mostly, you're paying based on searches, and their $29/month plan gives you 250k operations a month.
Searchanise
Searchanise is a well-known tool that offers smart filters, up-sells and cross-sells. With your ability to select and promote certain products in search, show socks when the customer searches for shoes, or test out any other promotion strategy in your search results.
Features
- Product Strategy Adviser
- Filters - price, colour, sizing, rating, product type, tag, etc.
- Recommendation blocks
- Product labels in search results
Pricing
Searchanise charges based on the size of your product catalog, which is great for large search volume stores that don't have a huge product selection. They do have a free plan for up to 25 products, and then they start at $9/month for a 500-product catalogue and go up from there. Shopify Plus plans are also available.
Dynamic Email Content
As discussed in our previous Best Email Marketing Tools blog post, personalization within email content is practically standard nowadays.
55% of consumers have said they like email messages with relevant products and offers.
Like on-site content, this personalization is mostly generated by user behavioural data but can also be influenced by customer tags, geography, and other factors.
Many top email providers offer these personalization tools out-of-box, but further integrations (such as those with the personalized recommendations we will highlight) can be set up for advanced personalization.
Product Recommendation Engine Personalization
If you've just launched a new business or have not delved into the world of personalization, we recommend starting with personalized product recommendation tools.
When properly optimized, personalized product recommendation tools have been shown to increase click-throughs by more than 100% compared to generic product recommendations.
Although some Shopify themes offer product recommendations out-of-the-box, opting for a personalization tool that provides dynamic recommendations based on catalogue data and purchase behaviour provides a more unique and customized experience.
These product recommendations can be added to any website's:
- Homepage
- Search page
- Collection pages
- Product pages
- Cart or checkout page (depending on the customizability of the checkout page)
The Best Product Recommendation Apps
Limespot
Scalable personalized recommendations
Limespot is perhaps the only provider that uses data from all customers (merchants) to personalize each individual consumer's journey.
This tool has a serious advantage because they are studying the past buying history of your store, complementary products, and possibly even competitors.
Their advanced AI combines full catalogue data with customer browsing and buying behaviours to deliver 1:1, real-time personalizations to each user.
By personalizing recommended products at each step of the user's journey, Limespot can shorten the timespan between the user's awareness and consideration phase and relay information unique to their needs.
Features
- Complete plug-and-play solution
- Sitewide upsell and cross-sell recommendations
- Optimize product recommendations sitewide
- Multivariate a/b testing
- Integration with popular loyalty tools, transactional email providers, review apps
Pricing
They have a free plan for merchants earning under $5,000/month in revenue. Still, you'll want the power of at least their $20/month program, which gives you access to email personalization, deeper integrations, and better split testing. They also have enterprise plans and more advanced feature opportunities.
Nosto
Enterprise On-Site Personalization
Nosto has extended its offerings to provide an all-in-one on-site and omnichannel personalization solution.
In addition to providing personalized product recommendations, Nosto allows eCommerce owners to personalize their on-site content (such as banners and layouts) and produce dynamic bundles, pop-ups, personalized emails, and more.
Features
- Personalize category merchandising based on purchasing behavior
- Offer dynamic product bundles based on catalogue attributes and purchase data
- Optimize on-site content with personal messaging and calls-to-action
- Deliver unique, personalized homepage content
- Optimize pop-ups with behavioural triggers
- Personalized emails based on behavioural data
- Offline personalization
- Mobile app dynamic content based on cross-channel behavioural data
Pricing
Nosto is best suited for mid- to enterprise-level businesses (those making over $1 million) with its starter plan of $1,000 per month (that does not include on-site personalization). Plans also do not include category merchandising, dynamic bundles, or advanced testing, but these can be added for an additional monthly fee.
Visely
Mid-market product-tag recommendations
Visely offers product recommendations for on-site, search and within emails. Similar to other product recommendation tools, recommendations are based on tags from product attributes and customer data.
The platform also offers unique image-based recommendations that use object, pattern, and scene recognition to match products appropriately.
Features
- Image-based recommendations that use object, pattern and scene recognition to match products
- Visely's Explainer Tool works to visualize how products relate to each other based on content, product tags, shopper behaviour and image analysis
- Easily customizable within any Shopify theme
- Automatic multivariate testing
- Checkout upsells for Shopify Plus
- Integrations with popular review, loyalty and email provider apps
Pricing
Visely's mid-tier program offers customized, post-purchase, and dynamic recommendations and Shopify Plus checkout upsells for $499 monthly. The Enterprise plan, at $999 per month, is the only option for personalized content, rule-based recommendations, and widgets for external properties (like blogs or forums). However, image-based recommendations cost an additional $149 per month for all plans.
Bold Upsell (Bold Commerce)
Entry and Mid-market personalized conversion tools
Bold Commerce offers various conversion apps focusing on product bundles, subscription upsells, and more. Each app can be integrated with their machine learning, advanced product recommendation tool (Bold Brain) to deliver personalized recommendations based on advanced data analysis.
Features
- Smart subscription personalized recommendations when integrating with Bold Subscriptions
- Cross-sell and upsell personalized recommendations when integrating with Bold Upsell
- Product bundle personalized recommendations when integrating with Bold Bundles
- Personalized loyalty programs when integrating with Bold Loyalty
- Smart audiences and segmentation
- Advanced analytics for audience and cross-sell performance
- Integrates with Mailchimp and Yotpo
Pricing
Bold Brain is priced at $19.99 per month with 2% of widget sales. All integrated conversion apps, such as Bold Upsell, Bold Bundles, and Bold Subscriptions, cost $9.99/month and up. Merchants should note that the app must be integrated with another Bold product to provide personalized recommendations.
Dialogue
Self-Serve Personalization Platform with 4 Key Placement Options
Dialogue has a powerful AI engine for making the right recommendations to the right users, with the flexibility to add manual segmentation. They focus on 4 key placement options:
- Smart Banner - typically across the homepage, includes a marketing message and call to action and is personalized to each user in real-time.
- Recommender - the traditional AI-powered recommendation bar of 3-4 other products at the bottom of a product detail page or another page.
- Storyteller - a few slides of content with a similar layout to a banner but meant to convey a longer message or explain how to use a product. It can be embedded on the homepage, blog posts, category pages, or product detail pages.
- Booster - recommends complementary products instead of related products. Usually placed on the cart page. Best for increasing Average Order Value (AOV).
Features
- Personalized Banner Creation
- Product Recommender
- Storytelling Personalization
- Customizable Product Feed
Pricing
Contact Dialogue for additional information.
Syte
Upmarket and Enterprise Full-Suite of Personalization Tools
Syte is a seriously impressive personalization suite that includes advanced on-site search personalization, the usual gammon of "also bought with" and upsell/cross-sell AI functionality, as well as a visual search personalization tool that can take a customer's uploaded image and find related products.
Features
- Camera Search
- Discovery Button
- Recommendation Carousels
- Personalization Recommendations
- Personalization API
- Personalized Discovery
- Deep Tagging
- Augmented Site Search
- Product Site Search
Pricing
This is an enterprise tool that requires an annual contract.
Next Steps
Personalization is inherently about collecting and using data to guide the user to a goal. While product recommendations are the most common form of personalization, many brands, especially in fashion, apparel, beauty, and skincare, are likely to see more value out of intent-oriented personalization. That is, if you know they have dry skin, show them the dry skin products, not the age-reducing products. Or, if you know their shoe size, don't show them shoes you don't have in stock.
Personalization is still in its infancy. As marketers, we have so much more to do, and as consumers, we want so much more. The only thing I know for sure is that static sites—sites that don't have any personalization components—will become antiquated in the near future.
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