5 Types of Personalized Product Recommendations for Shopify Stores in 2022

A personalized shopping experience is every customer’s prerogative and demand. In fact, here’s what the research tells us:

For 63% of consumers, a personalized shopping experience on Shopify and other eCommerce stores is an absolute must-have.

Around 75% of marketers claim that personalization boosts user engagement and 90% feel that it contributes to profitability.

As per Forrester, about 89% of businesses are investing in personalization today.

The writing is on the wall: Personalization is the name of the game for eCommerce brands in particular. While website conversion rates by industry are typically low across the board, one of the best ways to increase conversions is through personalization. Failure to personalize your offerings and content can cost your store dearly and lead you to lose valuable customers for life.

So how can your Shopify store add a ‘personalized’ touch to its offerings? We have two words for you: “Product recommendations.” In this blog, we will deep dive to understand how you can personalize–and elevate–your service with on-point and engaging product recommendations on Shopify. Let’s jump right in.

Top 5 Strategies for Personalized Product Recommendations on Shopify

#1: Landing Page Product Recommendations Are Always a Big Hit!

Your landing page is the gateway to your brand’s products and other offerings. Adding a customized touch to it can do wonders for your brand. There are numerous ways in which you can personalize the landing page. One of the most popular strategies is to showcase your ‘best-selling’ products as United by Blue demonstrates below:

If you have customers buying the same product again and again, showcase it on your website’s landing page. This can help you get more sales for your Shopify store.

You can also entice customers with a “Trending Now” section to create a sense of urgency and encourage customers to hit the purchase button without a second thought:

#2: Personalized Recommendations Based on Customer History and Behavior Are Important

Amazon’s personalization strategy has left eCommerce websites with no choice but to up their customization game. In fact, according to data, about 35% of what consumers buy on Amazon comes from algorithm-based recommendations. An AI-powered recommendation engine can be used to:

• Showcase products that consumers are most likely to buy based on past purchases, buying behavior, and other attributes
• Throw light on relevant products that customers are unlikely to discover on their own:

Pro tips:

• If you wish to boost the sale of long-tail products, opt for algorithm-based personalized product recommendations.
• Also, think about creating “Fallback scenarios” for new users as you’re not likely to have any behavioral data on them in the beginning. In such a case, your recommendation system can provide more standardized personalized recommendations such as Popular Products or Category-filtered Logic.

#3: In-depth Product Page Recommendations Are Well-Worth the Effort

Product page recommendations are all about featuring a product and its functionalities in a customized capacity. Your goal should always be to offer the most relevant product recommendations. This can be done in numerous ways. One of the most popular ways of doing this is by engaging in the ‘Similar Products’ recommendation. 

This style refers to providing customers with more product options based on what they were browsing. Take a look at Johnny Cupcake’s Product page, which showcases ‘Related Products’ on the Product page:

This type of widget can increase user engagement and can be implemented easily as it is a form of category-based filtering.

Another form of personalized recommendation for your Product page could be “Customers who bought this, also bought….” as shown here:

This type of collaborative filtering gathers data from multiple users to gather insights into their preferences. This is done by assessing how users are adding similar items to a cart and combing through their purchase histories. If you want to improve your item-to-item and personalized recommendations, this should be your go-to strategy.

#4: Cart Page Recommendations Help Reduce the Dreaded Churn Rate

If you want to increase your average order value (and quantity), accurate Cart page recommendations is the need of the hour. Considering that customers are most likely to make a purchase on the shopping cart page, sometimes, it helps to give them a slight nudge and offer personalized product recommendations. Here are a few handy tricks you can leverage:

• In order to increase the overall order value and size, you can recommend Accessories or relevant products as Sarah Raven’s website demonstrates below via its “You might also like” section on the Cart Checkout page:

• Then, of course, you have the “Frequently Bought Together” recommendations that have become famous since Amazon first implemented them. Make sure to keep A/B testing with different layouts, designs, and product recommendations to understand what’s working (and what’s not):

#5: Category Page Recommendations 

Category page recommendations are entirely different from other forms of personalized recommendations because customers are already familiar with the product and have all the relevant details with them. So, your goal here should be to guide your customers instead of making them jump through multiple pages to land on the desired product/item. To that end, you can assist consumers by:

• Showcasing the popular products and offering diverse recommendations that fit well within the product category
• Showcasing new arrivals in categories that are most-visited by your consumers. Surfdome highlights its new arrivals on the homepage banner, giving their popular products top billing:

• Lowering the price of two associated products via the “Buy Together and Save” widget as Walmart demonstrates below:

As counterproductive as it may seem, this strategy can help you to boost sales through the roof.

The Bottom Line

Personalized product recommendations can empower your Shopify store to contextualize and customize the offerings exactly the way your customers want them. Take a cue from the super-useful strategies outlined above and guide your customers in their quest to find the best products that are tailor-made for them in every sense of the term.

With 45% of online shoppers more likely to shop on a website (mobile website) that offers personalized recommendations, this is a sweet deal–and one that’s not to be missed.