Ecommerce brands have seen 10 years worth of growth in a 90-day period as COVID-19 has driven shoppers online.
This, in turn, has accelerated the use of personalization, according to
Personalization After COVID-19, a study by Yieldify.
Of the retailers polled, 74% have a website personalization program in place, and that number is expected to hit 93% next year.
UK marketers are ahead — 81% have website personalization programs, versus 65% in the U.S.
Mobile apps are second to websites — overall, they are personalized by
56%, with 26% planning adoption in 2121.
Email is third — 60% have email personalization, and 30% plan to adopt it in 2021.
Website personalization is being driven by:
- Real-time behavioral data (i.e., targeting shoppers dwelling on cart page) — 76%
- Individual user profile data — (i.e., using a Customer Data Platform)
— 63%
- Cookie-based historical data (i.e., ‘new users’ vs. ‘returning users’) — 62%
- Data ingested from other channels (i.e.,
targeting email subscribers) — 62%
All this is happening as retention has taken over acquisition as a website personalization strategy. Sports and leisure retailers lead
the way, with 82% hoping to improve retention.
Overall, brands hope to:
- Increase retention rates — 58%
- Increase conversion rates — 55%
- Increase
order size — 53%
- Increase engagement rates — 50%
- Meet customer demand for personalized experiences — 50%
- Keep up with competition — 46%
- Increase return on acquisition spend — 45%
But brands face obstacles. The biggest barriers to website personalization are:
- Resource: a lack of expertise
— 37%
- Tool: limited functionality — 36%
- Resource: a lack of time — 35%
- Tools: too expensive — 34%
- Data: lack of actionable data
— 34%
- Data: privacy laws preventing action — 31%
- Strategy: concerns over ‘over-personalization’/creepiness — 29%
- Return on investment (ROI:
not measurable enough — 24%
- Strategy: too complicated a project — 23%
- Strategy: lack of internal buy-in — 23%
- Strategy: higher priorities elsewhere
— 22%
- Return on investment (ROI): too low — 20%
- N/A—nothing in particular/don’t have any impediments — 6%
In the U.S., 75% of
customers have tried new shopping behaviors since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. So have 71% in the U.K. And 58% have done so in France, and 54% in Germany.
To meet this demand, 60%
overall use dynamic creative, product recommendations that change from user to user, and 69% use static creative.
In contrast, 57% have user-specific content in which the person’s
name is used, and 55% have variable copy that changes with the target audience.
Meanwhile, 68% of the respondents employ real-time behavioral decisioning, in which customers are shown
different content at the checkout page. And the same percentage uses dynamic segments — i.e., customers who have purchased in the last 30 days.
In contrast, only 54% use AI-driven
predictive segments — customers least likely to convert.
Yieldify surveyed 400 ecommerce leaders in the U.S. and UK.