How Product Recommendations Can Connect Your Brand to Consumers

An old expression tells us that "all roads lead to Rome." If you're a retailer in today's market, you want all roads to lead to your store, whether it's an online site, a brick-and-mortar location or both. To marketers, these roads are known as channels. Fifteen years ago you had to concern yourself only with a few of them, mostly broadcast media and print media.

Welcome to the new age of retailing: the internet, social media, tablets and smartphones, to name but four, present new challenges for retailers. Because of these new channels and technologies, consumers rarely need to travel down just one road to do their shopping. They are, in a very real sense, moving targets that weave in and out at will, doing their shopping through different channels, from a PC to mobile application to a TV shopping network. Whatever channel is most convenient to them at the time is the one they'll use to connect to your store.

Simply put, in order to reach these consumers you have to have a consistent presence in a lot of places. As shoppers move in, out of and across all channels — sometimes at the same time — you have to be able to connect with them on their terms.

Here's why: Nearly 50 percent of shoppers use technology to save time. A 2010 survey of U.S. consumers found that 88 percent are more likely to choose a company that allows them to connect to it via online search, mobile phones or a self-service device. These changes in retail behavior are playing out daily and will only get greater. According to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 65 percent of U.S. respondents already shop across at least two channels and 21 percent shop across up to five channels.

As a result, we've seen the introduction of a new consumer behavior known as showrooming. Tech-savvy shoppers visit a store to check out merchandise and then use their hand-held device to search the web for a better price or different store where they can purchase the same thing. In other words, they do product comparison shopping in real time without even leaving the store.

How do you connect with a consumer at a key point in the purchase decision cycle when that person is a moving target, especially when showrooming is involved? More importantly, how can you engage this shopper in a meaningful way, whether online or offline, that will result in a sale rather than a missed opportunity?

It's a growing problem, given that 98 percent of online shoppers leave the store or abandon their cart prior to purchase. Consequently, it's a paramount concern for all retailers to connect and convert those browsers into buyers before they abandon the store. In short, it's all about closing.

One answer is omnichannel retailing — i.e., seamlessly displaying engaging content across all channels. And one of the best ways to do that is by investing in category content backed by product recommendation technology.

Category-based product recommendations can quickly help shoppers reach a purchasing decision while still on your site or in your store. Retailers are already plugging into the benefits. For example, the e-tailing group found in 2012 that 87 percent of online retailers plan to invest in category content and 66 percent of those were going to include product comparisons.

Recommendation technology, a key source of product comparisons, provides an easy-to-use, content-rich experience that helps guide shoppers through a store's inventory quickly while giving them more confidence in the buying process.

Product recommendations also have been proven to keep shoppers on a store's site longer, resulting in more products viewed. Additionally, product recommendations provide a more engaging experience, thus extending the value of a retailer's overall search engine optimization investments. Such recommendations are more meaningful to a specific consumer because they can be based on that person's prior purchasing behavior as well as other variables, such as website visits, products previously viewed and social network attributes.

Does it work? In a word, yes. Amazon.com, for instance, generates $19,000 per minute from sales on recommended products alone.

According to Forrester Research, U.S. retail e-commerce sales are expected to reach $279 billion by 2015. However, retailers in this new age are far from reaching the finish line. Mobile and social commerce are both nascent technologies still in their infancy, but they'll only extend the era of the empowered shopper.

Your goal is to connect with these peripatetic shoppers and assist them in making a wise purchase, whether they're shopping in a virtual or real store. Placing consistent, seamless, and simultaneous product recommendations throughout your various marketing channels, from website to interactive kiosks, can engage consumers in a compelling, credible way that drives sales.

There's another old expression to consider: When in Rome, do as the Romans do. As a retailer in the world of e-commerce, you want to do as today's shoppers do and be everywhere.

Ken Levy is the co-founder and CEO of 4-Tell, an e-commerce software company. Ken can be reached at ken@4-tell.com.