Today, personalization has made its way in most facets of eCommerce. No one wants to buy simple, plain, or mass products anymore. Indeed, the majority of consumers are willing to pay a premium for a unique, fresh, and personalized product; this number has been consolidated with Millennials coming into their prime purchasing years and Gen Z entering the job market.[1]
For a successful eBusiness, you need to break away with conventions of offering products on your store. As customization enters into the mainstream, people are becoming accustomed to having a canvas to express their personality on every daily activity. Product customization is one such phenomenon in almost all retail sectors that is driving substantial growth lately.
As a matter of fact, the product personalization market is on track to reach a total value of 31.63 Billion USD by the end of next year, and is expected to continue growing at a CAGR of 9% through to 2023.
When observing big brands like Nike By You and Inkifi leveraging the success of customizable products, we gathered these 4 rules from their methodologies. If you are planning to give your customers the option of personalizing products, you should follow these rules:
- Keep the overall experience simple for users
When featuring product customization, there are many considerations before adding it to your eCommerce. Many embark on overly complex journeys. Make sure you are not overdoing it. Once you are set with your core products and the level of customization you are offering, you need to present it in a very simple yet sophisticated manner.
If your eStore is not aesthetically pleasing, easy on the eyes and intuitively navigable, then your customers will have a difficult time on your website. This will have a negative effect on their mind and hinder their shopping experience. In turn, it will decrease your conversions, sales, and repeat purchases.
So, it is best in the product personalization practice to keep the user experience simple and efficient.
- Let people share their creations on social media
In our article on how social media can impact your growth strategy, we’ve built on research from the Harvard Business Review (HBR) to demonstrate how in this social media age, brands are based on relationships[2] where we, as companies, focus on the needs of our users to develop and market our product or service.[3] Indeed, social media has given everyone a forum to express themselves to their community. Knowing that clients want to share their personalized creations with their online community, it is the best practice by top product customization players to offer these options directly from the moment of product design. This way, you enable your customer to become a genuine brand ambassador within their community and upgrade their experience. In return, this offers you, as a personalized product retailer, an additional channel which is not costing you anything.
All in all, social media still has an untapped potential to serve as a key component of your growth strategy, promising to become not just a high-converting community sales channel, but also to elevate customer service and groom loyalty.
- Treat as a way to conquer niche segments
With the advent of product personalization, many eBusinesses have weaponized this new technology to conquer niche markets. With the personalization industry being increasingly dynamic, new fulfilment technologies have made it possible to push customization even further. Nonetheless, it shouldn’t be more complex, as stated in rule #1 – keep the overall experience simple for users. Indeed, the best practice is to streamline the experience and have it targeted to the niche markets for which it is intended. As marketers can now differentiate products in a manufacturing environment, they will see higher customer satisfaction, higher conversions, and repeated purchases when targeting the right niches.
- Make the customer experience a priority
Making sure your webstore along with your product designer tool create a seamless experience for your visitors is a priority. This goes beyond UX/UI, and is intended to encompass every interaction a customer has with your organization. According to a Forrester study, customer experience (CX) drives revenue growth, and CX leaders enjoy a 5 percentage point advantage in global revenue over CX laggards.[4] Indeed, this is the time to get into omnichannel retailing, as retailers are now expected to provide a holistic CX that includes online-offline approaches, showrooms and “buy online, pick up in store” options, and plentiful product information.
Nonetheless, there is one thing that all customers seem to want in the post-purchase part of CX, and it is the ability to return goods within a reasonable period, typically 30 days. Considering that there are multiple ways to minimize the effect of returns on your eCommerce, it is important to know that demand for online purchases dips if consumers think they could be stuck with something they don’t like.
Final thoughts
As more eBusinesses offer product personalization and customization options, they will see a boost in profitable revenues, keep their best customers engaged, and see this trend become mainstream. Winners will be those that review and apply personalization best practices including keeping experience simple for users, encouraging social sharing, targeting the right niches, and securing repeat customers through delightful overall experiences.
[1] https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ch/Documents/consumer-business/ch-en-consumer-business-made-to-order-consumer-review.pdf
[2] https://hbr.org/2016/05/build-your-brand-as-a-relationship
[3] https://hbr.org/2018/02/the-most-successful-brands-focus-on-users-not-buyers
[4] https://go.forrester.com/blogs/16-06-21-customer_experience_drives_revenue_growth_2016/
