Many retailers are missing out by failing to personalize the selling experience for their mobile customers. They have already missed out on a huge chunk of the revenue in the market and will continue to do so unless they learn to adapt to the modern consumer.
What are these retailers not doing?
Lack of responsive pages: This page layout makes use of the CSS media queries to identify the width and change the layout as expected. Responsive web design is essential in the modern world to reach customers browsing the mobile web. Additionally, having a responsive web site (or not) will affect a business’s web site rankings on Google.
Lack of product recommendations: Product recommendations are a great way to build consumer loyalty and influence impulse purchases. When such recommendations have been automated, the retailer will be able to save time as well as resources. Product recommendations come in various types, for example wisdom of other consumers, persona based recommendations, rule-based engines and algorithm personalization.
Lack of search functionalities: Some retailers have not yet installed search functionalities which can enhance the consumer’s personalized experience.
A report dubbed “Personalization Across Digital Channels” has been able to show the major blunders that most of the retailers often commit when it comes to mobile commerce. Consumers have very high expectations from retailers and this keeps growing as the days go by. Retailers, therefore, have no option but to try and meet that demand. Ramping up personalization for consumers is an idea that the retailers have no option but to welcome. This should include at a minimum features such as saved search histories, suggestions based on past purchases and responsive pages which have been structured to meet the specific requirements of each and every device.
Both web and mobile applications have fallen victim of poor implementation. But it is important to understand that retailers should take the idea of mobile personalization more seriously.Due to the limited real estate available on the mobile devices, conversion rates have been particularly affected by a lack of personalization when compared to desktop. Personalization makes life easy for mobile consumers. With it, they are able to find what they are looking for much quicker and with less frustration.
As a retailer, it is very important that you make your mobile site or application easy to navigate for your consumers. If a consumer has difficulties and frustrations while trying to access use your site or application, he or she will be tempted to try out what the competitor has for him or her.
To enhance loyalty and engagement through personalization, retailers must begin by addressing their needs for data. Make sure your work to strike a balance, satisfying the needs of the consumers for personalization and respecting their desire for privacy. Quite a few retailers have failed to take this step. Since they have been unable meet the demands of the consumers, revenue has slipped through their fingers. The report came to the conclusion that the techniques which many retailers use for personalization are underdeveloped and lack the basic principles for success. Stating over fifty percent of studied retailers have failed to provide content that is being motivated by context in mobile, tablet and desktop apps. Consequently much of the digital content they provide is never explored.
Furthermore, over thirty percent of these retailers never provide recommendations for their products on the mobile sites. Even the twenty six percent that do such recommendations have not been able to do it well. The recommendations are in most cases are not so close in relationship to the products that a specific consumer is interested in, which just works to kill impulse buying among consumers.
In a separate report from Contact Solutions, they detailed the increasing consumers’ desire for recommendations and assistance options as they try to do their shopping. Brands must be aware of the consumer’s shopping process and provide suggestions and tips to ensure that consumers will not leave the app.
Providing personalized recommendations is an excellent first step in providing personalized content and will help you sharpen your skills before you move on to providing personalized content of other types. Perhaps no retailer does a better job of providing personalized recommendations that Amazon. Amazon bases their recommendations on a number of elements: the customer’s previous purchases, products in their shopping cart, products they’ve rated and liked, and what other customers have purchased.Amazon has included recommendations at nearly every point of the purchase process, all the way to check out and beyond.
Many people feel that retailers should do something to improve the performance of mobile search. A possible way through which they can better personalize the mobile experience is by maintaining past search histories. According to “Personalization Across Digital Channels”, it is evident that over eighty percent of the mobile apps in their study operated without having the provision for previous search histories. Retailer’s apps should save these previously searched words so that they will visibly pop up when a customer begins typing to do a search.
Apart from failure to implement personalization, another mistake of the retailers has been failure to create a smartphone specific check out experience. Working with a desktop shopping cart on a mobile device is a very tough and frustrating experience. Mobile shopping should offer a mobile optimized shopping experience that is streamlined to fit the mobile format. Avoiding clutter and make it easy to add a product to your cart and easy to complete the purchase. Utilize big, easy to spot buttons and simplify your navigations to avoid any possible confession.
In conclusion, this article has shown the benefits of personalizing the mobile experience and provided some basic suggestions to start a personalization program. There is a gap here that most of the retailers have not yet been able to benefit from. To help reduce this gap,start by taking advantage of the specific suggestions in this article and leverage the power of personalization to help your business grow.
