Online browsing is becoming vitally important in today’s natural products space – particularly in the age of COVID when people have been increasingly spending more time at home and scrolling on their devices. With ever-increasing competition, retailers and brands are now needing to find a point of difference as they battle to compete without extreme discounting.

Matthew Pezzimenti of conversion rate optimisation (CRO) agency Conversion Kings is passionate about helping companies create personalised experiences for their customers that increase profits and grow market share, one customer at a time.

In his presentation at the Naturally Good expo 2021 he outlined some basics of this fascinating and vital area of business.

Website personalisation defined

This is the process of creating customised experiences for visitors to a website. “Natural products are a personal purchase, however, many online stores are nothing more than a digitised catalogue,” said Mr Pezzimenti. Rather than providing a single, broad experience, personalisation allows companies to present visitors with unique experiences tailored to their needs and desires.

Personalisation example
Through advanced AI machine learning, personalisation can cater individually to each audience member depending on their browsing habits, and create a unique customer experience suited to them. Geographic personalisation, for example, may display summer wear to users browsing from areas experiencing high temperatures and low rainfall.

The importance of CRO testing

Personalisation testing investigates the impact of tailoring website experiences to specific segments of an audience. “Algorithms learn the behaviour of your users and will apply the same experience to users that share preferences. With personalisation, you can offer unique experiences that are relevant, meet users’ needs and thereby develop more consumer interest in your products.” There are a number of different types of tests, the most common ones being A/B, multivariate, personalisation and server side tests.

“A/B testing or split testing helps you prove if an idea or hypothesis is correct or not. By understanding if and how elements impact user behavior, you can move towards higher conversions with greater confidence and ROI. It compares a new variation of a web page to the original control page to measure differences in user behaviour.”

The tests focus on a single variable – page layout, copy, imagery, psychological triggers, or incentives. Each new test variation and original control is shown to a proportion of your traffic using CRO testing software. “We then use the same testing software to determine the differences in customer behaviours for each experience. The analysis of these behaviours reveals whether the tested conditions result in quantifiable increases, or decreases, in your conversions compared to the control.

“Personalised experiences can improve conversion rate, but they don’t always succeed. So it’s vital that you test personalised experiences to ensure your new user experience helps boot your conversions.”

Different Conversion Rate Optimisation products

There are many CRO related products and tools on the market depending on business needs including the ones below. It’s worth investigating which one suits your needs best:

• Dynamic Yield
• Sitespect
• AB Tasty
• Maxymiser
• Monetate
• Optimize 360
• Evolv
• Fullstory
• Vendi

The bottom line

Consumers’ expectations have shifted to the point where people expect a personal digital experience that mirrors the typical level of personalisation they receive offline. Many have grown accustomed to personalised experiences from their shopping recommendations, social network and news feed.

As expectations have risen so high, businesses eager to improve their products are changing their strategy to address this need directly. Nowadays many business are naming personalisation as a top investment priority. If you are interested in this area, it may be worth investigating your options with a specialist agency.

A big thank you to our speakers for being part of the Naturally Good Speaker Series 2021. If you would like to read more takeaways from our speaker sessions please subscribe here for regular updates.