Comment: Retailers should offer a personalised online experience

1 Comment

Being relevant and personal online has never been more important.

Being relevant and personal online has never been more important. Yet personalisation is another of those buzzwords that’s been kicking around in the ecommerce space for a decade or so, but I’m not 100% sure anyone knows exactly what constitutes personalisation. However, I am 100% sure very few retailers practice it.

As we hurtle towards a world of common value propositions and vanilla websites that follow conventional best practice, how do you differentiate? Surely behavioural-driven personalisation is the only way to achieve real differentiation?

Despite there being many third-party software applications that drive dynamic merchandising and personalisation online, very few retailers bother to deliver relevant product offers and personalised content to customers.

But hang on a minute - turn the clocks back 30 to 40 years. When you walked in the door of your local hardware store, the owner knew when you were coming in that he hadn’t seen you for six months and that you were most likely after some replacement light bulbs. He also knew you probably needed some batteries.

Or when your gran walked into her local womenswear store the staff knew she was after her winter tights and that they could cross-sell her some gloves and a scarf.

You can also bet your bottom dollar that when your mum and dad walked into their small local convenience store, the owner knew them by name, knew what their weekly shop included and would always cross-sell them some nice treats.

We have the technology and the capability to do all of this in ecommerce and yet less than 1% of all retailers offer a truly personalised experience.

From a communications perspective, few retailers even bother sending segmented and behavioural-driven emails, never mind truly personalised ones.

To this end, a special thank you to John Lewis for its email three weeks ago offering to sell me a nice new range of ladies’ workwear but, unless it knows something I don’t and I’m likely to begin cross-dressing sometime soon, I’m unlikely to take it up on this opportunity.