Personalization is a valuable and effective part of the shopping experience. But personalization must always be just that – a part of the shopping experience, not the shopping experience. There are occasions when a shopper asks for certain products and the search results are affected by personalization. Being able to find relevant products through good search is imperative to higher conversion rates.
Don’t get me wrong, personalization is great
The scope and advantages of personalization for eCommerce are ever-growing. Personalization systems tailor the information a customer sees on the screen based on something known about them. For example, if a shopper in Atlanta searches for jackets in the spring, a personalization system might use the knowledge of location and time of year to display lighter-weight jackets than it would to another shopper living in Boston during the winter. Or maybe a shopper has been browsing the women’s department of a site, then searches for a shirt. The personalization system might choose to show women’s shirts to the shopper first.