What's Hot - The Certona Blog

Tuesday, 21 February 2012 Written by Evan Stoecker

                While home pages may not be as instrumental as they used to be with customers being taken directly to product pages, that does not make the home page unimportant.

                At Internet Retailer’s Web Design and Usability Conference, David Wachter, the senior vice president of e-commerce and direct marketing at JimmyJazz.com and ManAlive.com, noted that loyal customers still navigate directly to home pages.

                With this in mind, the home page must be made useful and easy to use for both familiar and non-familiar users of the site.

                In order to achieve this balance, Wachter laid out some best practices. Amongst them, he mentioned that the home page should show the site’s special offers, display content to be found deeper in the site, recently viewed items and product recommendations personalized to that individual.

                With the proper personalization platform, every one of these aspects can be accomplished in a bottom-line effective manner. Aside from pulling browsing and click information to provide personalized recommendations, the right recommendation software will use the keywords typed into the search engine to help individualize the home page. In doing this, not only will the home page be showing products that are more likely to be purchased, but it is making the customer’s experience easier, thereby making them happier.

                This sentiment is supported by a recent study by Forrester Research Inc., where 62% of those surveyed said that the use of a personalization platform for e-commerce sites was useful when shopping online. “The platinum rule of e-commerce is to treat others the way they want to be treated,” Wachter said.

                With the substantial growth of the e-commerce industry, in both customers and competitors, be sure you are doing everything possible to stay one step ahead of the pack. Beat out the others (only 10% of the attending audience at Wachter’s presentation were currently personalizing their home pages) and have your personalization platform properly optimize your home page. 

Original Source: Internet Retailer

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Wednesday, 15 February 2012 Written by Evan Stoecker

If you have not seen or downloaded Part 4 of our Personalization Metrics Guide, now is the time. 

The three previous sections have covered Segmentation, Demand, & Average Order Value (AOV). In this edition, we cover a variety of aspects concerning Conversion Rate. Among other things, you will learn what influences conversion rates, best practices when considering conversion rate, and how to go about optimizing your conversion rate. Below, you will find a small snippet from the white paper:

Part 4: Defining Conversion Rates

Website conversion rates are one of the hottest topics in the ecommerce industry, and with good reason. A move to increase your conversion rate from one to two percent means doubling your profits, and there are few e-tailers in today's economy that wouldn't jump at the chance. While it may seem deceptively simple if you look at online blogs devoted to tracking and increasing conversion rates, the reality is this metric isn't quite as straightforward as many would have you believe. In fact, it's easily one of the most complicated metrics to consider. 

To continue reading, download the guide, which includes parts 1-4: Click Here

Looking forward to more? No need to worry, once we roll out Part 5 covering Cart Abandonment, you will be emailed the most recent edition of the Personalization Metrics Guide. 

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Thursday, 12 January 2012 Written by Evan Stoecker

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Tuesday, 20 December 2011 Written by Todd Scholl

It's easy to gather data. But how should companies best collate, cross-reference and use information gathered through different channels?

Like anything in life, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. And gathering data to provide a personalized brand and shopping experience for consumers is no different.

The first step requires defining the breadth and depth of each customer—meaning the common identification of visitors by channel (web, mobile, call center, store, etc) and how they interact with each. This provides retailers with a unified representation of the data and allows them to better target market their consumer base.  Next, incorporate the product catalog and respective SKUs by channel to further cross-reference your consumer profiles and then, prime the data with historical purchase history where applicable.

After your data foundation is built, maintain your process of collecting more consumer insight and determine where other attributes can be included, such as variables for navigation (time of day, geo-location) and catalog (brand, size, color, price).

Because consumer preferences are constantly evolving, the fresher the data the more relevant it is for making personalized product and content recommendations. How a consumer behaves while shopping on a retailer’s site is the most accurate indicator of their intent. Whether derived from a mobile app, email, in-store kiosk or website, it is important to recognize consumer preferences as they are revealed during the current shopping session before making suggestions.

Once a profile has been built on a consumer's behavior patterns and preferences, retailers can compare it to their current movement through the site to distinguish what's different about their current behavior from the previous shopping session. Combining business rules further enables merchandisers to harness the power of real-time behavioral profiling while maintaining control in defining their recommendation strategies.

Personalization is about allowing consumers to interact with an experience on their terms and to discover choices in the way that they think, not how a retailer wants them to think. By leveraging real-time cross-channel behavior, individualized historical profiling and dynamic merchandising, retailers should have the tools and data necessary to effectively engage with their consumers and deliver that optimal experience.

From ‘Searchandising & Recommendation’ – An Internet Retailing Special Report, November 2011

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Tuesday, 13 December 2011 Written by Todd Scholl

For many consumers, online shopping has become a big part of the holiday season, and e-tailers across the industry spectrum hope to get part of the billions in profits earned from holiday shoppers. As with any online shopping experience, though, understanding what is necessary to keep consumers on site and making those purchases is a must. While factors like a good storefront and an easy-to-use shopping cart interface will always be an important part of the equation, research has suggested there are additional factors at play during the holidays, and the quality of your recommendation system could help them work to your advantage.

One of the most important factors for consumers is the ability to see their shopping cart total before they checkout. Consumers tend to walk away from their shopping cards when they see the final total, so a constant running total can help customers understand exactly what they’re buying, especially if they’re tapping into your recommendation system and selecting those add-on products.

Another important factor for most consumers is that products are ready to ship immediately. If the inventory isn’t in the warehouse, consumers don’t want it during the holiday season. To capture consumers this time of year, you have to be able to let them know what isn’t in stock so they can move on. This, however, is one spot where your recommendation software can shine. If you’re out of a product the consumer is looking at, change your merchandising rules and drivers to ensure other, similar products are immediately presented so consumers have a chance to select that product instead.

Naturally, within the top three, is the “good deal” factor. With the economy still squeezing the budgets of many consumers, everyone seems to be looking for a good deal these days. Fortunately, even here, your recommendation system is essential. Helping them understand where the deals really are on your site could drive up your sales totals exponentially during the holiday season.

Statistics have shown that consumers are doing some serious shopping this holiday season, and you can tap into that potential simply by tweaking your recommendation software a bit to meet the needs of your shoppers.

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