The Personalized Online Shopping Experience

Part 2

Most people have experienced personalized online shopping. Now, learn how the process works and what it means for

the future of online retail.

Involving the Guided Search Tool

• Some websites incorporate specialized guided search tools to better assist you

• This type of tool sidesteps traditional online browsing and searching to engage the customer

Involving the Guided Search Tool

• Hunting through a website's inventory can be time-consuming and inconvenient, but a guided search tool eliminates guesswork

• By emulating a traditional in-store salesperson, the tool uses advanced algorithms to streamline shopping

When You Don't Know What You Want

• It's not unusual to go shopping and not know what you're after– Maybe you want to start exercising more, but you

don't know what equipment you need– Or you're buying a gift for a young relative, and you

aren't sure what someone their age might want

When You Don't Know What You Want

• Even if you're used to trying clothes on before you buy them, a sophisticated guided search tool can help

• This type of tool seems simple, but there are deep layers of code at work, collecting information that benefits you and the site

How a Guided Search Tool Works

• Like a salesperson in a store, the guided search tool asks the customer a series of questions about what they need

• These questions may be about the age and interests of the person, their complexion, their clothing size and personal style and more

How a Guided Search Tool Works

• Once that information is all collected, the guided search tool offers a range of products that suit the user's answers

What Happens Out of Sight

• Guided selling software like this searching tool doesn't just benefit the customer

• Every answer that you give the search tool feeds information to the site for developing its understanding of who you are

What Happens Out of Sight

• guided selling software retains the information, adding it to the databanks for later use—we'll explain how later

When the Customer Leaves

• Let's say that despite the personalized e-commerce site's best efforts, the customer never bought anything, never added anything to the shopping cart, never created a profile, never entered an email address. Game over, right?

When the Customer Leaves• Wrong. The personalized

recommendation tool keeps on working, using the browsing history data it collected even away from the main site. But how?

Retargeting and Bringing Customers Back

• When the customer leaves, the product recommendation engine uses the data it collected to fuel its off-site advertising

• The advertising space it pays for on social networks, search engines and other sites are filled in by the information that a customer implicitly provides. This is called "retargeting"

Retargeting and Bringing Customers Back

• Retargeting is when the customer sees an ad for the web store they left, they see one featuring the same products they viewed

• The product recommendation tool encourages them to return

The Customer Comes Back• Imagine that the retargeting ads worked, and the

customer returns to the site to make a purchase • When they make it to the first checkout page, the

product recommendation engine offers up a few last-minute add-ons based on what's in the cart

The Customer Comes Back

• Before the customer seals the deal and checks out, the cart has been abandoned

• At this point, the store's personalized online shopping coding has enough data to reach back out to the customer

How Do They Bring Customers Back?

• There are plenty of reasons that customers skip out on their carts—in fact, it happens often enough to have a name. "Cart abandonment"

How Do They Bring Customers Back?

• For the personalized online shopping algorithm to work, it doesn't even matter. If the customer made it as far as filling their cart, the program has all the information it needs to bring them back