Product recommendation is a powerful lever for e-commerce marketers. It can help to reduce the bounce rate, improve average basket value, and increase sales volume.
However, imprecise or inaccurate recommendations can produce disappointing or even counterproductive results for visitors who are now used to personalised brand experiences.
Here are 10 best practices for successful product recommendations.
Before doing anything else, start by answering these two questions:
This stage of reflection will enable you to clarify your needs and define a concrete objective, which is essential to measure the effectiveness of your actions.
Here are a few examples of objectives to be pursued through product recommendations:
You can pursue several objectives at the same time. You simply need to ensure that each one has its own strategy, KPIs and regular monitoring.
Product recommendation can only be effective if your catalogue is properly structured beforehand.
The greater the degree of granularity, the more you can establish targeted strategies and make relevant recommendations.
Among criteria to be defined for each of your products, you can, for example, select the style, the level of promotion, the season or even an event.
To be effective, your recommendation strategies must be based on the actual behaviour of your visitors:
Find these answers by analysing their order history, their demographic profile, the last products they consulted or their last in-store purchases.
When visitors feel recommendations are relevant, they are more likely to respond favourably.
Advanced tip: Use a Customer Data Platform to refine your recommendation strategy with purchase intent or product affinity scores.
Each of your e-commerce website's pages is suitable for product recommendation, but will correspond to a different degree of customer maturity in the buying cycle:
Search, category and even error pages also have a role. Adapt your recommendation strategy to each one.
"Our customers also bought", "Previously consulted articles", "Complete your look with", "You might also like"...
To present your recommendations, choose an appropriate, punchy title based on your knowledge of the persona:
A high quality UX you can maximise the impact of promoting the right product to the right person.
Offer visitors a seamless experience by:
These are the kind of details that will lead to a successful conversion and encourage repeat purchases.
Making a recommendation is great, but proving that the product has been appreciated by others is even better! 75% of internet users say they consult the opinions of other consumers before making a purchase.
Social proof can take different forms depending on your product:
While social proof reinforces trust and can create a sense of urgency, it does require investment in terms of moderation (monitoring publications, responses, etc.).
A/B tests are invaluable tools when it comes to optimising your strategy. Failing to use them considerably limits your chances of success. Sometimes just a few adjustments can make all the difference to your sales.
To ensure that your test is relevant, select a representative sample and take the time to analyse the results.
This will also enable you to check that the settings have been made correctly and that they return the right references.
Email remains a very effective channel for making highly personalised product recommendations, since you can mention the person's name or recent purchases, for example.
Here are a few situations in which emailing can be used to support your recommendations:
And, while we're on the subject of best practices, don't forget to make it easy to unsubscribe from your list.
If your visitors receive too many recommendations, you run the risk of losing their attention or even boring them. If you are unsure, always choose quality over quantity. It is better to have two well-targeted, well-placed recommendations than four risky ones.
Imagine that, for your visitor, it's a bit like being approached by a salesperson who wants to recommend a product. If they are looking at a bag, and you interrupt them several times to suggest different pairs of shoes, you're unlikely to be successful.
Thanks to our Merchandising solution, you can apply these best practices and make recommendations that improve conversion rates and average basket values.
Learn more about our Merchandising solution here, or contact us to see how our tool can help you.
