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Product recommendations enhance the shopping experience and increase conversions through better and contextual engagement.
Studies have found that 37% of shoppers who clicked a recommendation during their first visit to an online store, returned to the site; as compared to the 19% that did not experience personalized product recommendations.
But there is a difference between showing product recommendations and nudging an online store visitor to actually interact with them.
A powerful recommendation engine is one thing. But the next is to add an X-factor to the product recommendations you display, making them more compelling and intuitively clickable.
And we have some tips!
How To Get People To Engage With Your Product Recommendations?
1. Display Them Above The Fold
Above the fold refers to the area at the top of the webpage. You can't be sure if the person visiting your website will make it to the middle of the page or not. Placing your product recommendations widget above the fold attracts immediate attention, which leads to more engagement with it.
If you place the items too low on the page, the visitor might miss out on seeing them, and that will lower the conversion rate you drive through them.
As you can see, the Good Vibes have added the product recommendations in the form of ‘best sellers’ on their homepage, above the fold, to make them contextual to a buyer’s journey.
2. Display Social Proof With Them
Visitors won't trust your brand without social proof. 35% of consumers say that they buy an expensive product if it has better reviews from consumers like them. You can use the same consumer psychology in your product recommendation widgets.
To make your product recommendations more trustworthy, add product ratings right under them within the widget. This will make visitors want to explore the products, simply because it has been reviewed positively by other shoppers.
Amazon has been using this strategy really well, displaying both the overall rating of the product as well as the number of people who have posted a review.
3. Bring Them To Attention By Using Popups
Pop ups have been an effective conversion strategy when it comes to driving a website visitor’s attention to something. So far, they have been used extensively to capture email addresses of store visitors in lieu for discounts and deals. But you can use this space and opportunity to also recommend products!
Display personalized product recommendations like related products, top-selling items, best sellers or promote a new collection. But make sure you time your popups right by displaying them on exit or when a visitor has spent some time on your site.
4. Leverage Different Types Of Recommendations Across The Store
Product recommendations are not just about displaying related items every time. There are different types of product recommendations and strategies that one must leverage. Each of them uses different consumer psychology to address different stages of the buying cycle.
-> Recently viewed: It's a hassle to go back and forth to see which products you last checked upon. You should show recently viewed products with an easy-to-scroll widget to avoid such issues for store visitors.
-> New arrivals: Most of the time, you will witness slow growth on your newly launched products. The reason for this is the time taking process for Google to index them, and the process of SEO takes time to show you some good results. And most of your visitors won't search for these products unless you show them. So you need to set up the widget that promotes these newly arrived products and get it in front of your audience. Here is an example of the same from Urbanic.
-> Featured Products: Are there any best or specific set of products you want to highlight to your shoppers? It can be either the most unique set of products or those not popular enough to be sold faster. If yes, you can place a 'Featured Products' widget on your Shopify store to attract more people. Purplle has displayed their featured section to highlight their offers and best selling section.
-> Similar products: So rather than showing the same product in different variants, you can show related items that match some of its data points. For instance, display similar items on product pages so that if someone doesn't like that product, they can explore other similar types.
-> Frequently bought together products: Use 'Frequently Bought Together Items' on the cart page just before someone is checking out so you can get them to buy more.
5. Display A 'Quick Add' Button On The Product Recommendation Items
The best way to please your visitor is to respect their time and make their shopping experience seamless. Now imagine if someone is browsing through a product page, spots an excellent product recommended below, and wants to get it too. That person will need to click on the product link, check that out, and then add it to the cart.
That's a long process, and you want to make it easier for them as much as you can. So display a 'quick add' button on the products you're displaying, and they can complete their purchase much faster.
Here is an example of how Purplle makes things easier for their visitors by adding the add to cart option.
6. Display Recently Viewed Products
Sometimes, someone would just scroll a few products in the store and leave. But it's not the end of the story. They might revisit you, and either they can start all over again or pick up where they left off to move towards making a purchase, faster.
This is where displaying the recently or last viewed products comes handy. And since you're showing them the items they previously had an interest in, they are more likely to click through the recommendations.
Here is an example of how Flipkart uses it to display the recently viewed items browsed by visitors:
7. Display Inspired By Browsing Recommendations
Personalization is not something to dwell upon especially because more than 80% of online shoppers now deem it as a must-have on websites. This is where using a powerful AI-driven product recommendation engine comes into play, which learns from a visitor’s browsing pattern and purchase behaviour, displaying items that they may not have discovered yet but are more likely to be interested in.
For example, the homepage of Amazon is highly personalized based on your interests, past transactions, and recommendations. Every product displayed there is inspired by your browsing, making it a tailored shopping experience for you.
Conclusion
Product recommendation should not be just another thing you set up on your Shopify store. It is an important part of your eCommerce conversion strategy, and you should continuously monitor the impact it has on how store visitors interact with your website.
Just like any other marketing strategy, you need to continually test and learn from the performance of different product recommendations; making it important for you to choose the right app for it.
WISER is a Shopify product recommendation app that enables you to set up powerful personalized product recommendation widgets across your store. It comes with features like A/B testing and in-depth analytics, letting you experiment as well as learn from your shopper’s on-site behavior, to optimize their experience for higher conversion rates and sales.
FAQ
Q1. Do product ideas actually work in conversion?
Ans: Yes, product ideas do work in conversion. A great product idea will have the potential to convert a visitor into a customer, which is the ultimate goal of any business. If you already have a product or service that people like, then you can use those ideas as inspirations for new products or services that could take your business even further.
Q2. How is a product recommendation engine created?
Ans: The first stage in creating a system that can automatically suggest products to users based on the preferences of other users is to identify comparable individuals or products. Predicting the ratings of the goods that have not yet been rated by a user is the second phase.
Q3. How can context be used when making a product recommendation?
Ans: Context-aware recommender system creates suggestions by including available contextual information in the recommendation process, in contrast to typical recommender systems that solely leverage the relationship between users and things to make recommendations.
Frequently Asked Questions
