The Way Of the Future: Boosting Ecommerce Sales with proper Magento Customization
One of the most common features of today’s ecommerce is the ubiquitous use of templates – it seems that absolute majority of online stores have completely forgotten about such thing as individual design and happily forgot this step in favor of templates that often make different storefronts virtually indistinguishable from each other. That said, you should already see an opportunity to stand out from the crowd in such a situation – make sure your website looks and feels different from your competition, and you are bound to strike a chord with your target audience. In this article, we will cover some of the ways it can be done.
photo/Gerd Altmann
Speaking about best online store customization experience, we can mention such an ecommerce platform as Magento. As an open source ecommerce platform, this online store engine can boast with the widest opportunities for customization that could change any online store not being based on functionally-limited templates. This significantly widens the creativity and gives the chance for implementing cutting-edge marketing ideas which competitors of the store doesn’t have.
1. Personalized Interaction with the Store
As an ecommerce platform, you have to interact with your customers in a variety of ways. Personalizing these interactions lets each client feel special attention on the part of the store, thus improving customer loyalty and engagement. You can play around with a lot of customization ideas, with their impact ranging from significant and immediately recognizable (for example, you may decide to reveal the prices of your products only to the registered users) to small touches (e.g., not showing the customer the cart icon unless he already has something in the cart). Individually these customization options may not amount to much, but when combined they will create a unique individual experience of interaction with your store for every client. Some of them can be implemented on your own, while in more complex cases you may need to hire Magento customization services.
2. Retail Customizable Products (On-Demand Personalization of Products)
We may be used to buying one-size-fits-all things that don’t really fit anyone. Some people may be used to having a size that doesn’t quite fall into the traditional gradation (a size smaller is too small, size large is too large). However, we are currently witnessing the rise of the new age of retail customization. Brands like Nike already make first steps into the domain of custom shoes, giving their customers an opportunity to design their own models using a variety of options and manufacturing the result, but even if you don’t have an opportunity to pull something similar off, there are more affordable ways to add customization. If a pre-manufactured product is supplied in a number of variants, something as simple as adding an online customizable product designer will give a client an opportunity to choose exactly what he needs without having to navigate multiple pages to do so.
3. Wholesale Customizable Products
While we may be some way off from being able to affordably produce individual custom-designed products, when it comes to wholesale this approach is already used far and wide. When a client needs a consignment of personalized goods (usually for promotional purposes), he can be given an opportunity to construct the product from the ground up its size, colors, prints and fonts to be used and so on.
4. Customized Analytics Tracking
Real personalization is unachievable unless you know as much as possible about the customer, which means that you have to adjust analytics tracking of your store to keep track of the customer behavior and gather info for future analysis. In the long run, it will let you build a personalized products view, relevant product recommendations and notification sequences for each individual customer.
Highly personalized recommendations is probably where it shines the most. A running gear store may offer a run assessment to recommend particular shoes. A clothing store may build its recommendations around specific body types, budgets and habits of its customers. The same goes for any other industry – ask yourself how you can differentiate between different customer types and implement it.
5. Customized Email Marketing and Notifications
Customized analytics tracking finds another application in building of personalized email marketing campaigns. Creating a personalized email sequence for each customer, you can grab his attention and turn him into your loyal customer for years to come.
6. Customizable Shopping Cart
The shopping cart should reflect the relationship between the client and the store. For example, if the customer gets a discount for an action (e.g., posting on social media), it should dynamically change the pricing. Another interesting application is the creation of an automated purchase list based on what this client buys typically on a regular basis.
Customization is, undeniably, the way of the future. You may think the template you use right now is enough, but it is not always going to be so – if you want your business to grow you will have to switch to a custom solution sooner or later.
Author: Melissa Burns
