I’ve been doing some research into the best locations for product recommendations. Originally, I expected homepages or product pages to be the best location to show product recommendations because of the high traffic to these pages, but I was wrong!
Have a look at this graphic:
The graph shows the percentage of revenue driven by different areas that are dynamically merchandised by Emailvision eCommerce recommendation engine technology.
Emailvision’s personalisation technology helps retailers optimise their store into dynamic selling environment. For example, it can adapt product recommendations to be as relevant as possible for each individual visitor. Not only does this improve visitor journeys by reducing the need to browse and search, it helps retailers increase revenue and conversions by putting the right products in front of the right visitor at the right time.
As you can see, category pages drive the most amount of revenue – an average of 24.2%. Retailers using this space are consciously achieving business results by skewing product recommendations by rules – for example, show “worst-sellers” to shift old stock, or show “most expensive” suggestions to increase revenue.
The second best-performing location is the homepage. Dynamically driven blocks on the homepage can use profiled information to present returning visitors (who are most likely to arrive directly to the homepage) with the most relevant products based on their history. Our unique, patent-pending Suggestion Choreography technology allows different algorithms and “logic” to adapt based on the individual visitor’s unique context – for example, once a returning visitor begins their journey, our smart algorithms will change from using “profiled” behaviour to “real-time” behaviour, allowing for personalisation based on intent.
Retailers wanting to cross-sell products, in order to increase average order values and average basket sizes, can see an average of 4.6% of revenue driven by checkout page suggestion blocks. These areas, also driven by Emailvision behavioural targeting technology, allow retailers to promote other products, such as accessories, using a mixture of “people who bought this also bought” algorithms (filtered by business rules) and predictive, profile-based suggestions. It’s important to test checkout page suggestions, as they can have adverse effects on conversion rates.
Product page suggestions are best used to up-sell similar but more expensive products. Up-sells should be smarter than just “same category, more expensive” suggestions – taking into account a visitors profile and preferences can help potential customers make that all important step from a £30 product to a £50 product – increasing your revenues and profit.
Worst-performing, out of the locations used for this research, was Order Confirmation pages. Typically, these are pages presented to visitors after they have checked out and completed an order. A simple reason for underperformance may be that customers have completed their task, and require nothing else. Testing this location with different types of algorithms will increase the performance, especially if discounted or impulse “no-brainer” products are suggested.
So what do you think? Do you still expect the homepage to be the best performing location for product recommendations? Let me know!
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27 Feb 2013
- Tags:
- Behavioural targeting
- ecommerce
- Emailvision
- homepage
- Location
- personalisation
- personalization
- product recommendations
- recommendation
- user experience
- Personalization
