Read Length - Approx 4mins

In a world where technology is growing at such a fast pace, our attention is being challenged constantly.

Every second you are being sucked into a never-ending cacophony of sounds and images that numb your senses and leave you momentarily frozen in thought or lack of.

Now, throw in a journey online and that experience is only multiplied by millions of wonderful products, biblical amounts of written content, and sidebars of so-called personalized marketing content to entice even the most frugal of people.

Wonderful right...the world online is easier right??

Wrong, it’s actually getting harder and harder to find what you want and be satisfied. How often have you gone online looking for rugby boots and ended on a totally irrelevant site looking at some laptop bag that caught your eye in a sidebar advert... I smile as it happened to me just this week ☺

The road to being a happy shopper online should be quick, direct and all lead to satisfaction and a purchase.

Now let’s quickly jump into the world of science where they believe you the average human has the average attention span of 8 seconds, so just one second less than a Goldfish (None of which has ever really been proven) but all the same let's go with this.

So we have just 8 seconds to make a sale and what do we decide the best plan of attack is?

We decide to throw everything we have at the visitor at once, product pages full of wonderful items that take ages to scroll through, and maybe a widget with your recent history just to get you back on track if you get lost in the maze.

OR we add sidebars showing other people's stuff that looks more interesting and really make sure you don’t close the sale... Sound familiar?

Don’t get me wrong, technology is the way forward but it can come at a price. If not used properly it will distract your visitor away from buying with too many choices and options and give them a reason to leave your site

Let’s stop everything right now and just focus on the number one reason we are all here and that’s to make a sale.

Why not make things as easy as possible for your visitors, turn the site into a dynamic mirror image of everything they love and everything you know they will love in the future. Create personalized journeys where every visitor gets a different version of the site.

Real-Time Personalization –“here comes more technology” but if used right will close sales quickly and also create loyalty to your great unique brand and keep them coming back.

So what are the steps?

• Firstly look for a Personalization tool that’s based on a hybrid collaboration filtration model so you know it has the capability to learn about your visitors in Real-Time and create the ultimate user experience.

• Use recommendation widgets high up on the homepage so your visitor can find what they need in milliseconds, this will also help reduce bounce rates considerably. Just make it easy.

• Make sure the widget design is functional (Hover or slider) and looks seamless on the page.

• Use bigger images “Please” if it’s the only point you decide to take from this article, (we need to ban the use of these small thumbnails like recommendation images) People buy with their eyes online, and if the image in the widget isn’t perfect and enticing then it just won’t sell. Never settle for small inferior images.

• Connect AI-driven algorithms to the widgets so your site will know your visitor's wants, needs and desires before they do. Before being the important word here, After i.e. “history recommendations” can cause more damage than good sometimes.

• Now connect all this personalized customer journey to either an AI-driven Push Notification or an AI-driven trigger email and complete the communication loop. Both tools are dynamic and wait for your visitor to fill them with content. The main strength behind these tools is that if a subscribed or even an unsubscribed customer leaves your site they won’t be hounded with just history after their visit. Good A.I. finds reasons why they possibly left and tries to answer them with other suggestions.

• Integration/ design and go-live should take just 3 to 5 days in total. That will include laying Div containers for the widgets and full design. The only thing you have to do is lay a line of Javascript and maybe get an HML of your category tree. Do not pay out money to get the widgets developed on your site as this is something your Personalization provider should be able to do in house

Finally, let’s look at the average ROI.

The industry average for a built-in Personalization app is just 2.5%.

This includes most major brands, as their built-in Personalization app is just basically an afterthought to make their platform look all-encompassing.

If you are making about 600 sales a month on your site and have traffic circa 30k upwards then you will grow your CR by 10% in just two 2 weeks.

It should then grow to approx 20% and over depending on what tools you use.

Just so you know the power of Personalization here is some sales figures