Creating on-site experiences that fill your customers baskets

Matching online experiences to a customer’s personality profile, needs and aspirations is key to encouraging them to add another item to their shopping basket – but what’s the best way to achieve this?

Understand your customers

It’s always important keep your buyer personas front of mind in all of your external marketing. Representing your target audience, these personas give you the opportunity to put yourself in your customers’ shoes so you can anticipate what products they might buy in addition to what they have already chosen. Alongside typical demographics, such as age and gender, consider common barriers to purchase – such as cost – and think of ways to overcome them.
Unsurprisingly, 79 per cent of consumers are more likely to engage with a personalised offer, which could be anything from an email that addresses the customer by their first name, to recommending products based on their interests, or previous buying and browsing behaviour.


Smart selling

Once you have your buyer persona, you can create options that encourage bulk, impulse or subscription purchasing. It’s also important to use browsing and purchasing data to cross-sell related products, or ones that other customers, with similar profiles have bought. Amazon is well-known for this, as are fashion retailers such as ASOS who link to other items, encouraging shoppers to ‘complete the outfit’.

Engaging new customers

Sometimes, retailers only generate customer data once someone has visited the website several times, or once the first transaction is complete – often meaning the chance for early personalisation has passed.
Audience insight tools can solve this issue by connecting your website to large volumes of consumer data. Using a simple piece of website code, you can segment your audience and optimise content from their first visit to improve the chances of conversion. Research proves that the average page visit lasts less than a minute, so make sure you get your audience’s attention from the very first second they lay eyes on the website and your brand.


Channel consistency

From social media and blogs, to product pages, always ensuring that content is relevant to your customers will keep your audience engaged. At every touchpoint, think about the tone of voice, imagery and the products that are most likely to promote positive action. Creating a seamless online experience that guides customers towards purchase with consistent messages – from timely reminders for customers who have left un-purchased items in their baskets, to campaigns around new product launches or seasonal sales.