What does it mean to “individualize” ?
Individualize: transitive verb: To modify to suit the wishes or needs of a particular individual.
While ideating for a recent eCommerce project, I returned to a website of a popular apparel eCommerce site. Their site looked the same as yesterday. Empathizing with most customers, I asked the following questions:
Can I get some help here? Remember I was looking at those shoes in size 8?
The site had a chat window to open a conversation but I don’t feel like talking and bringing the representative up to speed. I was browsing yesterday and they should have known this.
Why doesn’t the site remember me?
I have learned that both retailers and eCommerce storefronts share similar challenges to deliver on-demand individualized consumer experiences.
As eCommerce continues to transform, listening to the consumer to meet and understanding them in the moment is critical. They love shopping in brick-and-mortars but are looking for special experiences. They want to be recognized. How do you deliver on this ambitious individualized eCommerce solution?
Through an engineering mindset optimizing the consumer experience where you drive better engagement, growth, satisfaction and new unforeseen opportunities (innovation). By enabling dynamicsite merchandising, product launches, evolving SEO, and guided selling and experience optimization. Data and creative engineering to build individualized eCommerce experiences.
There are many approaches to building better consumer experience engineering.
- Deliver a better supply chain.
- Enhance the customer success and support experiences.
- Develop a scalable infrastructure.
But in this post, I will address the overall concept of creating:
Individualized eCommerce Experiences with data and open platform experiences for consumers.
At the heart of the individual consumer is learning and conversations. Engagement data and listening to them to measure what matters. A data management platform for building eCommerce experiences that unlocks an essentially new “Home Screen” of their mobile experience. Through these preferences, the experience installs only the products and services that the consumer requires in the moment.
Do you want consumers to have the same site experience every time you visit?
No! Then deliver a fresh look each time. Customers like Fresh experiences! Why is fresh language across, Amazon Fresh, Freshly, HelloFresh….. Consumers value Fresh.
But how do you scale Fresh across a site has over 10 million page views? Fast content management systems (CMS) plus a strong data management platform (DMD) can deliver unique and valuable content along with the unified eCommerce functionality.
Isn’t that just Instagram?
Essentially, Instagram is a website feed built based on data (followers) and algorithmic recommendations. It even has cart functionality.
Instagram is that “Fresh” website you and your teams can be inspired to build for your customers. But you can actually build even better Instagram because unlike Instagram, your company can tell unique stories that provide the welcoming on-boarding for their customer’s shopping journeys.
Think Amazon Prime Video coupled with shopping. Storytelling that inspires and enables shopping. You and your customers create their story together. All you need to do is give them options to create their eCommerce experiences.
Here’s an example of an Individualized eCommerce experience.
User: I have my own cart can I can use My Cart for shopping?
Site: Sure we support these partner “Carts” (i.e. Square/Amazon/Stripe).
But won’t you lose the visibility of transactions? Possibly, but you are restricting them when you could provide the value (convenience) that the engineering team can be challenged to solve.
Data coupled with consumer engaged storytelling allow for the creation of individualized eCommerce experiences to deliver FRESH experiences to consumers.
Here’s how Salesforce and Adidas are working toward better journeys and individualized eCommerce experiences.
Thank you for reading and appreciate your comments.
Ben Morris
Creator of Engagement and Experiences
@benmorris