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Oct 15, 2022
Remember what shopping was like before product recommendation technology came to be?
You were greeted with alerts for sales on items you’re not interested in, and you had to comb through product pages to find more of what you were looking for.
Today, browsing through eCommerce sites has become such a breeze. Thanks to product recommendations, you can easily find and quickly buy products you want and need.
A study from Accenture showed that 91% of consumers are more likely to buy from companies that recognize, remember, and present them with relevant offerings and recommendations.
92% of marketers also say that customers and prospects expect personalized experiences from brands. Businesses that personalize their Miami web design and experiences see a 19% increase in sales, and 56% of shoppers are more likely to revisit an eCommerce site that offered smart product recommendations.
The data above proves that customers will be more willing to buy and return to a site that makes their shopping experience delightful and more personalized.
If you want to boost your sales and keep your customers loyal, incorporating product recommendations into your Miami web design is a must.
A product recommendation engine is a system that presents relevant products to shoppers to get them to buy.
Product recommendations can be as simple as presenting a list of your best sellers to shoppers or something more complex like using an algorithm. This is to show every visitor a dynamically updated list of items they’d like in a given context.
You can incorporate these recommendations into your web design in Miami and serve them at any time in the shopping journey, from homepages to shopping carts and even follow-up emails.
There are many great areas where you can use product recommendations across your eCommerce or content site to engage users and boost sales. Below are the best product recommendations suitable for the places to put one in your Miami web design:
The homepage is the first thing that users see when they visit your site from direct traffic. You want to greet them right away with relevant offerings they’ll be interested in. Doing this will motivate them to browse through your pages and keep them longer on your site.
Users coming from direct traffic aren't looking for anything specific when they land on your site. You can pique their interest by showing them your latest deals and highlighting your product portfolio. Here are the best product recommendation types for your homepage:
This type of product recommendation works all the time. It never fails to get people interested and browsing to see what you have to offer. Products that are best sellers indicate that it's been purchased the most. In a way, it sends a message that if somebody wants to try out your products, they can never go wrong with best sellers.
If you want to wow visitors, you can incorporate other event data, like clicks and views, into this recommendation system to present even more precise recommendations.
80% of your sales come from only 20% of your products. Putting your 20% in front of more people is the best way to get new customers to buy and maximize your sales.
If you have a content site (i.e. news sites or blogs), you can use other factors such as time spent on a page or seconds watched to help you determine what’s popular among your visitors or audience.
Use metrics that best define which piece of content on your site or item on your site is the most loved among your visitors.
Popular product recommendations are great for catering to new customers and visitors. But if you want to keep your repeat buyers loyal and finally convert frequent visitors into customers, you need to offer them more than your best sellers.
Make your customer base feel like you deeply know them through product recommendation algorithms that use past purchases and browsing history. It allows you to present relevant offers and can take your most loyal customers' experiences to a whole new level.
This system gathers information about every user that visits your site and uses this to curate a personalized recommendation based on their previous activity on your site and their search history.
If the algorithm can’t pick up enough information to present a more personalized list of items, it will fall back to a more general recommendation like popular items.
However, it’s still important to make sure that your “fallback” recommendation uses data you have on a customer as effectively as possible. You still want to present relevant products with the information you have.
Rating-based recommendations are another type of recommender system you can use to cater to mainstream or first-time visitors.
User ratings are another indicator of popularity. It can help people who are looking to buy but are undecided make a good and sound decision. If a lot of people love your product, users will think that they can never go wrong buying it.
There are two types of feedback that recommender systems use to present a more accurate list of product recommendations:
84% of people trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations from friends and family. If you're looking for a way to influence online shoppers to make a purchase, highlighting reviews and maybe even putting a "top-rated" list on your homepage are some of the most effective ways to do it.
A product page is one of the best places to put product recommendations because it makes it easier for users to find similar items and compare prices, features, reviews, and specifications.
This keeps them browsing your site, and, in a way, it also serves as a guide on what steps they should take next until they finally decide to buy.
Studies show that the longer a visitor stays on your site, the higher the chances they'll make a purchase. Below are various product recommendation systems you should consider employing on your product pages:
A lot of people who shop online also look for similar items to compare and choose from.
To keep them browsing within your site, show them similar products based on their category, descriptions, product titles, prices, and other factors that are important to your audience.
It’s crucial to create a filtering system that allows you to develop a curated list of similar items your visitors are looking for.
One of the best-performing similarity filtering systems is called “item-to-item collaborative filtering”. It was invented by Amazon in 1988 and is still used to predict a user's taste and find products that a user might want based on the information collected from other users who have similar preferences.
These two forms of collaborative filtering:
Recommender systems are like your friends whom you share the same with. They give you recommendations based on books, clothes, and brands they love.
“Customers who viewed this also viewed this” uses a recommendation logic that determines the similarity of two products based on how often they’re bought or viewed together by users.
One of the most compelling reasons why you need to add this feature to your product pages is because it enhances your visitors' discovery experience.
Given the number of products on your site, it’s important to find creative ways to present the right products to every visitor. Through the "customers who viewed this also viewed this" recommendation engine, you can potentially present items that consumers might not have originally realized they needed or are interested in purchasing.
You can make personalized recommendations based on what product a visitor is currently viewing, together with the purchase history data of that user.
Personalized collaborative filtering algorithms are a great way to get customers to buy and boost their total order value.
It focuses on developing a list of items based on the average similarity of products that a user has last viewed. By weighing in the recency of interactions, you can present more accurate recommendations.
Below is an example of a personalized product pages recommendations:
Another way to boost your customers’ average order value and quantity is to present visitors with similar or related items to the contents of their shopping cart.
Cart page recommendations reach customers at a stage where they're ready to buy. So, they're more likely to say yes when you present them with the right products at this time.
Several recommendation logics are a perfect fit for this area of your Miami web design.
Users expect and want a highly personalized online shopping experience that is tailored to their needs and wants at every step of their journey.
This means that recommending highly relevant items like accessories that are necessary to install a product or make it easy to use is effective in getting customers to add more items to their cart. Customers see it as your way of helping them instead of getting them to purchase more.
You can recommend items based on categories. For example, if someone bought an iPhone, then you can recommend them iPhone accessories. Category-to-category filtering structure system is easier to scale and automate.
One thing to keep in mind is that when defining what the “accessories” are to a particular item, they must cost two times or three times less than the price of the item.
Because they cost significantly less, users are motivated to buy more.
Here are six ways you can improve the relevance of product recommendations in the cart:
"Frequently bought with" recommendations are made of two to three items, which are considered complementary items to that of the main product.
Presenting frequently bought-together items based on what different customer segments have purchased is an effective way of getting them to buy more and boost your revenue.
You can develop a list of frequently bought together items based on category or what’s usually purchased at the same time by a large number of previous buyers.
Why does featuring a "frequently bought together" recommendation work at checkout?
Category pages are one of the most crucial drivers of discovery in an eCommerce site. It's where all relevant products are stored. Users are then given the capacity to filter through an expansive list and narrow it down to a particular subcategory, making it easier to find what they're looking for.
However, despite intense filtering capabilities, subcategories can be immensely deep, and sifting through hundreds of products within the subcategory can be time-consuming and tedious.
Placing product recommendation features in this part of your web design in Miami will provide the assistance users need to arrive at their desired product.
Given the various number of products or content you have on your site, it just makes sense to feature popular products on your category pages to foster discovery.
When developing your recommendation system, avoid using singular categories. Instead, create a structure wherein subcategories can be recommended for the main categories. This allows you to come up with a more diverse list of recommendations that are still relevant to users.
Zero search results and 404 pages disrupt a visitor’s discovery thread and cause friction in their shopping experience.
Make the most out of your pages with error messages by adding product recommendations.
It's a great way to keep browsing longer on your site by bringing them back to your product pages and preventing them from bouncing to a competitor.
In situations where a customer encounters 404 or zero results pages, show a match of what they’re looking for or an alternative. Adding a search box on 404 pages is also a great way to keep them on your site and make up for the glitch.
Product recommendations are a great addition to your eCommerce or content site. It boosts the discovery experience of your visitors and allows them to find products they never realized they needed or are interested in buying.
At Digital Resource, our web design specialists in Miami and digital marketing experts will work with you to create a custom website design that is not only aesthetically pleasing but uses product recommendations to boost the users' experience.
Want to influence purchase behaviors through effective web design? We can help! Contact us today.
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