With the growth of Ecommerce, store owners and marketers are continuously searching for new tools and features that help users convert as efficiently as possible.
One of the clearest trends for improving conversion rate, average order value, and user experience has been personalization, whether through email, on-site, site search, or on other channels.
90% of leading marketers believe that personalization significantly contributes to business profitability. In fact, 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them.
The most concerning part? Users who are not given a personalized experience end up turning to other large Ecommerce providers, like Amazon, to fulfill their needs.
Why? Because personalization time and time again has proven to work. This is because it can:
- Help curb information overload
- Help users get a better deal
- Make the purchasing process simple and faster
- Can provide additional information (which they would normally receive in-person)
Now, personalization is more powerful at scale, but smaller traffic (and revenue) stores can still get value. I’d just say don’t worry about personalization until you’re at least at $10k/month or 10k visitors, and even then you can wait until 50k monthly visitors and be just fine. The bottom line is about the increase to your on-site conversion, and if that is what you need, you’ll want to check out this list of recommended personalization tools. Not only can they help you customize each user’s experience, but they help simplify the user’s journey by providing unique one-on-one experiences.
Types of Personalization
Personalization is so much more than just product recommendations or using someone’s {firstname}. There are multiple points that can be personalized throughout your customer’s journey. Some of the most common personalizations include:
- Predictive Personalization
- On-site Dynamic Content
- On-site Notifications
- Search personalization
- Dynamic email content
- Product recommendations
The Shortlist of Best Personalization Tools for Ecommerce:
Predictive Personalization
On-site Dynamic Content
On-site Notifications
Search Personalization
Product Recommendation (and more)
Predictive Personalization
Predictive personalization is all about determining what your customers will do before they do it in order to better serve them. This ability to predict their behavior and tailor your offerings, products, messaging, etc. to them across different touch points is different from standard segmentation and personalization tactics.
Because this information is based on insights revealed through your data, AI can use algorithms and machine learning to optimize and improve over time, creating more accurate predictions and allowing you to send even more targeted campaigns.
Examples of where you can utilize predictive personalization include:
- Segmentation
- Marketing campaigns
- Content
- Product recommendations
- Offers
Predictive personalization tools use your existing sales and behavioral data to deeply understand your customers preferences and product/category affinity, which helps you engage with them more effectively.
Apteo
Predictive Marketing Personalization and Business Intelligence Tool
Apteo is a predictive marketing personalization tool that helps you understand who in your customer/audience is most likely to buy, to churn, to become loyal, etc. They then segment these customers, syncing to your marketing tools (email, SMS, paid social, etc.) to create highly personalized campaigns so you can send the right offer at the right time to each user.
Features
- Automatic Segments
- Custom Segments
- SMS
- Analytics
- Product Journeys for Segments
Pricing
Apteo’s real sweet spot is in those $300k - $10mm businesses who are growing fast, have customers who should be buying from them again and again over time, but the timing or messaging just doesn’t seem right with your existing flows and sequences. That’s where you’ll be able to instantly plug in this tool and get to work.
Apteo has a free tier and you can just plug them in and use some of their analytics for free, otherwise it starts at $300/month for up to 5,000 customers and goes up to $1200/month for 50,000+ customers.
On-Site Content
Website personalization is creating a personalized experience for users based on a variety of possible factors such as geography, account information, consumer behavioral data, and so much more.
Instead of providing a broad, simplistic user experience, on-site content personalization can provide a unique experience tailored to that user’s information, that is on par with an in-person experience.
These personalizations can be made to assets such as:
- Banners
- Copy on product pages
- Calls-to-action
- Pop-ups
On-site content personalization is practical for businesses that receive a lot of traffic or have a more complex catalog, as users can be generally overwhelmed by the amount of information on a site.
By adding personalized banners, calls-to-action or pop-ups that are triggered based on behavioral data, users can be funneled into a customer journey that is unique to their needs.
A few great personalization tools for this stage of the funnel are:
- JustUno - great for detailed segmentation and built-in product recommendation within the pop-ups.
- Privy - stellar pop-up tool with their own email and SMS marketing solutions built-in, for an all-in-one conversion optimization experience.
- Matcha - integrating your product catalog into your blog content, based on the content type. Not true personalization yet, but worth mentioning.
On-Site Notifications
The average session duration for a website is 2-3 minutes. With so little time to grab a user's attention, building a sense of urgency is key.
A variety of on-site notifications can be personalized to entice users to purchase or move further down funnel. Some of these notifications include:
- Pop-up notifications
- Up-sells or cross-sells on cart and checkout pages
- Social proof
- Urgency notifications
These notifications are also dynamically built based on the user’s previous browsing history, but they can also be built on product attributes, previous user data and inventory information.
A few tools for optimizing on-site notifications are:
- DataCue - (Also mentioned in more detail below) can give notifications based on browsing history that say, let you know if there’s a promo on something you browsed, or if an item comes back in stock.
- PushOwl - Send push notifications based on products in cart, pages browsed, items in stock, and more.
- Fera - With Fera, you can add various social proof elements or notifications to pages based on region, browsing behavior, products in the cart, etc.
Search Personalization
The search bar becomes an incredibly lucrative tool that can be leveraged for its dynamic content and user data.
If your business has a large product catalog or several pages that can be considered valuable (like blog content), then personalizing search is key.
With these search personalization tools, you can:
- Personalize search suggestions
- Provide search autocomplete
- Deliver product recommendations on typos
- Upsell and cross-sell
- Deliver live price, in-stock status and product reviews
By providing simple and personalized search functionality, businesses are able to drastically simplify the purchasing process, allowing users to find what they want quickly and effortlessly.
Algolia
Enterprise-level search tool
Algolia truly has some of the most advanced features for site search available on the market, and they cater to many larger retailers like Lacoste, Birchbox, and Under Armour. That being said, they’ve recently brought their plans to the mass market by offering simpler self-serve options.
Features
- Advanced Rule Builder
- Instant Search
- Split Testing Search Results
- Visual Editor
- Geographic Search
Pricing
They have a free community tool, but in order to integrate with Shopify (or Magento) you will need to start at their $29/month plan. They charge based on operations (searches) and records. For the most part, you’re paying based on searches, and their $29/month plan gives you 250k operations a month.
Searchanise
Searchanise is a well known tool that offers these types of smart filters, up-sells and cross sells. With your ability to select and promote certain products in search, you can say, show socks, when the customer searches for shoes, or test out any other promotion strategy in your search results.
Features
- Product Strategy Adviser
- Filters - price, color, sizing, rating, product type, tag, etc.
- Recommendation blocks
- Product labels in search results
Pricing
Searchanise charges based on the size of your product catalog, which is actually great for large search volume stores that don’t have a huge product selection. They do have a free plan, up to 25 products, and then start at $9/month for a 500 product catalog and go up from there. Shopify Plus plans are also available.
Dynamic Email Content
As discussed in our previous Best Email Marketing Tools blog post, personalization within email content is practically standard nowadays.
In fact, 55% of consumers have stated that they like email messages that include relevant products and offers.
This personalization, like on-site content, is mostly generated by user behavioral data, but can also be pulled by customer tags, geography, and more.
Many top email providers offer these personalization tools out-of-box, but further integrations (such as those with the personalized recommendations we will highlight) can be set up for advanced personalization.
Product Recommendation Engine Personalization
If you’ve just launched a new business or have not delved into the world of personalization, we recommend that you start with personalized product recommendation tools.
When properly optimized, personalized product recommendation tools have shown to increase click-throughs by more than 100%, versus generic product recommendations.
Although there are some Shopify themes that offer product recommendations out-of-box, opting for a personalization tool that provides dynamic recommendations based on catalog data and purchase behavior provides a more unique and customized experience.
These product recommendations can be added to any website’s:
- Homepage
- Search page
- Collection pages
- Product pages
- Cart or checkout page (depending on the customizability of the checkout page)
The Best Product Recommendation Apps
Limespot
Scalable personalized recommendations
Limespot is perhaps the only provider that uses their data across all customers (merchants) to personalize the journey of each individual consumer.
This tool has a serious advantage because they are studying the past buying history of not just your store, but complementary products and possibly even competitors.
Their advanced AI combines full catalog data with customer browsing and buying behaviors to deliver 1:1, real-time personalizations to each user.
By personalizing recommended products at each step of the user’s journey, Limespot is able to shorten the timespan between the user’s awareness and consideration phase, and relay information that is completely unique to their needs.
Features
- Complete plug-and-play solution
- Sitewide upsell and cross-sell recommendations
- Optimize product recommendations sitewide
- Multivariate a/b testing
- Integration with popular loyalty tools, transactional email providers, review apps
Pricing
They do have a free plan available for merchants doing under $5,000/month in revenue, but you’re going to want the power of at least their $20/month program, which gives you access to email personalization, deeper integrations, and better split testing. They do have enterprise plans and more advanced feature opportunities as well.
Datacue
Homepage and on-site content personalization
Datacue offers a recommendation engine that personalizes all on-site content, including personalized banners and notifications.
This tool is particularly useful for merchants with vast product categories or those who have large SKUs and customer traffic, as content can dynamically change based on the user’s behavior and interactions.
If customer A comes to your site to buy a bed, the next time they visit the homepage, it will look like you only sell beds, meanwhile if customer B starts looking at couches, your homepage will start to look more like a living / family room type experience.
Features
- Homepage personalization
- Personalized banners that load asynchronously based on user behavior
- Subtle notifications to drive urgency and notify of new or out of stock information
Pricing
Plans start at $9.99/month, which offers 5 dynamic banners, and go up to $299.99/month for 100 banners and all split testing functionalities.
Nosto
Enterprise On-Site Personalization
Nosto has extended its offerings to provide an all-in-one solution for both on-site and omnichannel personalization.
In addition to providing personalized product recommendations, Nosto allows Ecommerce owners to personalize their on-site content (such as banners and layouts), as well as produce dynamic bundles, pop-ups, personalized emails and more.
Features
- Personalize category merchandising based on purchasing behavior
- Offer dynamic product bundles based on catalog attributes and purchase data
- Optimize on-site content with personal messaging and calls-to-action
- Deliver unique, personalized homepage content
- Optimize pop-ups with behavioral triggers
- Personalized emails based on behavioral data
- Offline personalization
- Mobile app dynamic content based on cross-channel behavioral data
Pricing
Nosto is best made for mid to enterprise-level businesses (those making over $1 million) with its starter plan of $1,000 per month (that does not include on-site personalization). Plans also do not include category merchandising, dynamic bundles or advanced testing, but can be added for an additional monthly fee.
Visely
Mid-market product-tag recommendations
Visely offers product recommendations for on-site, search and within emails. Similar to other product recommendation tools, recommendations are based on tags from product attributes and customer data.
The platform also offers unique image based recommendations that use object, pattern and scene recognition to match products appropriately.
Features
- Image based recommendations that use object, pattern and scene recognition to match products
- Visely’s Explainer Tool works to visualize how products relate to each other based on content, product tags, shopper behavior and image analysis
- Easily customizable within any Shopify theme
- Automatic multivariate testing
- Checkout upsells for Shopify Plus
- Integrations with popular review, loyalty and email provider apps
Pricing
Visely’s mid-tier program offers customized, post-purchase and dynamic recommendations, as well as Shopify Plus checkout upsells for $499 per month. The Enterprise plan at $999 per month is the only option for personalized, content and rule-based recommendations, as well as widgets for external properties (like blogs or forums). However image based recommendations cost an additional $149 per month for all plans.
Bold Brain and Bold Upsell (Bold Commerce)
Entry and Mid-market personalized conversion tools
Bold Commerce offers a wide variety of conversion apps that focus on product bundles, subscriptions, upsells and more. Each app can be integrated with their machine learning, advanced product recommendation tool (Bold Brain) to deliver personalized recommendations based on advanced data analysis.
Features
- Smart subscription personalized recommendations when integrating with Bold Subscriptions
- Cross-sell and upsell personalized recommendations when integrating with Bold Upsell
- Product bundle personalized recommendations when integrating with Bold Bundles
- Personalized loyalty programs when integrating with Bold Loyalty
- Smart audiences and segmentation
- Advanced analytics for audience and cross-sell performance
- Integrates with Mailchimp and Yotpo
Pricing
Bold Brain is priced at $19.99 per month with 2% of widget sales. All integrated conversion apps such as Bold Upsell, Bold Bundles and Bold Subscriptions are an additional cost of $9.99/month and up. Merchants should note that the app must be integrated with another Bold product to provide personalized recommendations.
Dialogue
Self-Serve Personalization Platform with 4 Key Placement Options
Dialogue has a powerful AI-engine for making the right recommendations to the right users, with flexibility to add in manual segmentation on top. They focus on 4 key placement options:
- Smart Banner - typically across the homepage, includes a marketing message and call to action and is personalized to each user in real-time.
- Recommender - the traditional AI-powered recommendation bar of 3-4 other products at the bottom of a product detail page or in another page.
- Storyteller - a few slides of content with a similar layout to a banner but meant to convey a longer message or explain how to use a product. Can be embedded on homepage, in blog posts, on category pages, or on the product detail page.
- Booster - recommends complementary products instead of related products. Usually placed on the cart page. Best for increasing Average Order Value (AOV).
Features
- Personalized Banner Creation
- Product Recommender
- Storytelling Personalization
- Customizable Product Feed
Pricing
Contact Dialogue for additional information.
Syte
Upmarket and Enterprise Full-Suite of Personalization Tools
Syte is a seriously impressive personalization suite that includes advanced on-site search personalization, the usual gammot of "also bought with" and upsell/cross-sell AI functionality, as well as a visual search personalization tool that can take a customer's uploaded image and find related products.
Features
- Camera Search
- Discovery Button
- Recommendation Carousels
- Personalization Recommendations
- Personalization API
- Personalized Discovery
- Deep Tagging
- Augmented Site Search
- Product Site Search
Pricing
This is an enterprise tool that requires an annual contract. In order to learn more about their pricing, please fill out this form and our team will talk it through with you.
Next Steps
Personalization is inherently about collecting data and using that data to guide the user to a goal. While product recommendations are the most common form of personalization, many brands, especially in fashion, apparel, beauty, and skincare, are likely to see more value out of intent oriented personalization - which is to say, if you know they have dry skin, show them the dry skin products, not the age-reducing products. Or, if you know their shoe size, don’t show them shoes that you don’t have that size in stock.
Personalization is still in its infancy. We have so much more we can do as marketers, and so much more we want as consumers. The only thing I know for sure is static sites - sites that don’t have any personalization components - will become antiquated in the near future.
