Personalization is much more than just one of the buzzwords in the e-commerce year 2018. It is THE must-have for online shops that want to shine in front of their customers with an excellent shop. The study ‘The Power of me: The impact of personalization on marketing performance’ by Epsilon even revealed that 80 percent of consumers are more inclined to buy from a company, if it offers them a personalized customer experience. What can you conclude from this?
Aunt Emma reloaded in German online shops?
Right! The good old corner shop flair is finding its way into e-commerce. Because Aunt Emma from the Corner Shop greeted us personally, knew us very well and knew what we were looking for or what recommendations she could lure us with. By the way: “Aunt Emma Store” is a symbol in the German language for a really personal corner shop in the 1950s. “What worked at Aunt-Emma won’t be so wrong,” -many companies think, and are increasingly jumping on the bandwagon of personalization. But this courage to change has not yet returned everywhere. Because personalization is easier said than done. We have set ourselves the task of learning more about personalization and have therefore thrown ourselves into the world of e-commerce.
A perfect stage for this research was provided by DMEXCO, the trade fair for digital marketing in Cologne. There we conducted a survey on the subject of personalization in online shops with 101 trade visitors from the marketing sector (86 of them from e-commerce). The experts represented a colorful mix of e-commerce sectors:

Personalization is so attractive
Personalization is not the same as personalization. If one clicks through the depths of the online shops, one can be welcomed as a user at different touchpoints by personalization measures. For online merchants, it is important to select the right methods in order to use this potential as effectively as possible. But with so many possibilities, you quickly lose the overview. For this reason, the participants in our survey should rate the attractiveness of different personalization options using a weighted matrix table. The scale ranged from unattractive (1) to very attractive (6).

The potential of personalization


Why do many companies not use personalization options?
The 36 e-commerce experts, who have not yet used personalization, were asked to evaluate for us, why they are not yet personalizing (light blue bar).
In addition, those companies that already use the advantages of personalization for their online-shops should state the reasons they see for the non-action of their colleagues (dark blue bar).

The result is clear: The lack of resources is the main reason for the non-personalization of online shops too. Especially the relevant user data, which are necessary for personalization solutions, present companies with great challenges: The new basic data protection regulation makes it even more difficult to offer an individual shopping experience by making user data available.
The two groups of participants are no longer in complete agreement on the further assessments. However, by calculating the average of the added votes of both groups, two further central reasons for the non-personalization can be identified: On the one hand the lack of technical know-how and on the other hand the current software, which is not able to provide the necessary capacities, e.g. extensive customer data. It therefore fails in the broadest sense because of the processes that take place in the background of personalization.
What can be achieved with personalization measures?
Companies that have not personalized before need to be strong now. Because personalization can achieve some important business goals. For our survey, each of the 101 trade visitors gave their own assessment of which of the company’s goals are right at the top.
According to the survey, the goal of improving the customer experience is most likely to be achieved through personalization. 80 out of 101 participants agree on this. The goals of “increasing sales” and “improving customer satisfaction” are also considered to be easily achievable. The improvement of the conversion rate is also right on their heels. It is therefore noticeable that personalization is not only intended to increase sales, but also to focus on the customer.

Personalization as a future trend?
In the last part of the survey, all 101 trade visitors were asked to provide feedback on theses on personalization. They could fully agree, agree, be neutral or disagree. The fact that the improvement of the Customer Experience represents an attractive outcome of personalization was already confirmed by the respondents in several voices.
But what do the participants think of the statement that an individual customer experience will become more and more important in the future through personalization in the online shop? Long question, short answer: 36 participants fully agreed, 48 of the trade visitors agreed. Only 12 were neutral and 5 rated the statement as inapplicable. As the previous assessment already clarified, the customer is increasingly the focus of e-commerce.

How far can personalization go?
The solution is called situationalization
This is where situationalization comes in. This method operates regardless of whether a user is known or not and without personal data. Only the use of the current shopping situation is decisive for the creation of an individually relevant online shop tailored to the needs of the respective visitor. A user who opens an online shop with his smartphone via a business newsletter on his way to work will be shown a different shop than a user who starts his shopping trip on a Sunday morning via the Google search on his laptop.
Situationalization goes one step further than aunt Emma and thus also as many personalization tools. Because with situationalization you know how to address 100% of shop visitors exactly without knowing them personally. This enables personalized shopping experiences on the entire customer journey. Situationalization enables individual sorting in the product lists, suggests personalized search results and plays out product recommendations tailored to the visitor’s needs. In addition, situationalization can be integrated into the system quickly and easily. This means that companies that are afraid of the technical background can breathe a sigh of relief. Numerous interfaces to different systems are already available. Data can be used profitably from day 1 onwards.