Personalised customer experiences are fast becoming the difference between success and mediocrity in today’s eCommerce world. Every year new statistics tell eCommerce businesses just how important personalised content and marketing are.

A Statista report from July 2020 showed that 76% of eCommerce websites in the UK and US are already using real-time behavioural data to personalise experiences for their users (Stats on personalisation on e-commerce websites U.S. and UK 2020). On the other side of the coin, an Accenture report found that 91% consumers are more likely to shop with brands that personalise experiences for them (Accenture Pulse Survey 2018).

This is why digital eCommerce optimisation now must include personalisation. In this second post of our CRO Insights Series, we speak with Mike Austin, CEO & Co-founder of leading personalisation platform Fresh Relevance, who talks about the importance of personalisation in eCommerce.

‍

‍

What new trends have you observed in the last year in optimisation?

It’s increasingly important for retailers and brands to be able to orchestrate coherent experiences across multiple channels and pages.

Creating individual content experiments becomes too complicated to manage when shoppers expect the customer experience to be seamless (you might think in terms of channels, but your shoppers most likely do not).

It’s essential to be able to define an experience across multiple channels and pages, and then test against other experiences.

This can only be done when experimentation is built into your personalisation and content execution system. The old approach of having a separate optimisation platform no longer cuts the mustard.

What do you forecast is going to be key for eCommerce in the next 12 months when it comes to optimisation?

eCommerce businesses need to build optimisation into their resource and tool plans. It’s become a key part of how eCommerce companies should build their content.

Without being able to test in an integrated way, you won’t get conclusive results and will never be able to get the best return on your investments.

What common mistakes have you seen companies make or challenges you’ve seen them face in the field of optimisation?

Companies who marry a separate optimisation tool with their personalisation platform will often struggle, particularly when they’re making extensive use of personalisation across channels. It is much simpler to manage when the optimisation system is integrated into one platform.

How is Fresh Relevance preparing to stay ahead of the game in the optimisation landscape?

Fresh Relevance is investing heavily in state-of-the-art AI optimisation techniques such as contextual bandit and reinforcement learning. Our new Optimise Centre is fully integrated into the rest of the platform and will optimise personalised experiences across multiple pages and channels.

Watch the Website Personalisation 101 webinar Endless Gain and Fresh Relevance conducted together:

This is the second of a series of posts where we speak with leading customer experience optimisation companies on trends and the future of digital growth. In the first post, we spoke with SessionCam about user behaviour analytics.

Stay tuned for the next one!

‍