5 Steps to Capturing Fickle Consumers
Step 5: Using Product Recommendations to Drive Engagement and Increase Average Order Value
When visitors are navigating category and product pages on your site, they often rely on product reviews and ratings from other customers. However, reading reviews can be time consuming and distracting, and aggregate ratings alone are ineffective without reading the supporting comments. By providing product recommendations based upon the activity of other customers, you can help reassure visitors of their purchases. Of course this strategy will increase conversion rates and average order values.
Product recommendations are based upon item and visitor affinity models, such as “visitors who bought this also bought that,” “visitors who were interested in this were also interested in that.” They’re commonly placed on category pages, product pages, and the shopping cart or basket page, with different models being used for each location. With this approach you can measure the success of the recommendations by monitoring the increase in conversion rate and average order value for visitors who click on recommendations. You can also monitor the number of customers who purchased recommended products. The result is an increase in revenue and average order values that can be traced directly to product recommendations.
When it comes to improving cross-selling and upselling on your site, product recommendations are the way to go. However, recommendation content itself — placement on the page or the specific models used in different locations on your site — plays a role in the success of product recommendations. Understanding and measuring the conversion impact on the recommendation content will help you identify the combination that yields the highest conversion rates for your visitors.
Today’s retailers could actually learn a lesson from today’s fickle consumers. That lesson? Do your homework. Use available technologies and tailor your deals and process accordingly. Give consumers what they want, when and how they want it, and their loyalty will surely follow.
Mark Simpson is president and founder of multivariate testing, personalization and optimization solutions firm Maxymiser. Reach Mark at mark@maxymiser.com.
