Blog: EBay takes a stylish swipe at personalisation

EBay is the latest retailer to integrate a stylist service onto its site in a bid to curate its vast fashion selection for its customers.

Personalisation is the holy grail in online retail and there are many new technologies being trialled to help retailers segment their customer base.

eBay is using technology from Dressipi – the tech firm chaired by former M&S boss Sir Stuart Rose – which gives product recommendations based on a combination of factors including size, body shape and personal taste.

The online giant is following in the footsteps of Asos and John Lewis, which Retail Week last week revealed is about to trial an online personal shopper service for womenswear.

Curation is becoming increasingly important, especially for department stores and aggregator sites. Customers are time poor and don’t want to sift through pages and pages of items before they happen to stumble upon something they like.

The eBay and Dressipi tie-up borrows from Facebook, allowing shoppers to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ individual items which gives additional insight into their customers.

It’s clearly not an exact science, but if a personal stylist service can improve conversion by just 1%, it could be worth millions for retail.