What is ecommerce personalization?

We’re all shoppers, and we’ve all visited hundreds of different stores — both brick-and-mortar, and ecommerce websites. Of course, the unacknowledged truth about shopping is that whenever you go to a store, most products you see aren’t actually the ones you want. No matter which store you’re shopping in, you’ll likely need to sift through a ton of irrelevant items before you find what you really need.

That’s just what shopping has always been about. But that’s not how it should be.

What if the first products you saw were exactly the products you needed? Even better, what if all the merchandise in the whole store was displayed and ordered according to how much it mattered to you?

That’s exactly what shopping should be — fast, simple, and personalized. A few years ago, that may have seemed impossible, but shopping is now rapidly evolving, both in the store and online. With the power of artificial intelligence (AI), automation, ecommerce platforms, and marketing personalization, brands are finally able to tailor shopping experiences to customers’ interests, based on real-time web browsing habits and shopping data.

Personalization allows you to turn every shopping interaction into a meaningful and rewarding experience. In fact, personalized shopping experiences are key to customer engagement, retention, and loyalty in today’s retail landscape. It’s also linked to higher conversion rates and product sales, as AI creates seamless experiences that leave shoppers satisfied that they’ve made the right purchase, time and time again.

Ecommerce personalization is the practice of tailoring the online shopping experience to individual customers. This includes product recommendations, marketing messaging, and special offers personalized for each customer based on search and order history, and shopping trends over time. This helps foster loyal customers who feel understood and seen. Personalization is the art and science of showing customers the products they want, when they want them.

According to the State of AI Connected Customer, at least 73% of customers expect better personalization as technology evolves. And this is the bedrock of customer loyalty and driving more sales. You can customize shopping experiences by analyzing your users’ browsing and purchasing history.

Personalization comes in many flavors, and each one is designed to make different aspects of the shopping experience feel more relevant and engaging — whether it’s the moment a user lands on your website or follow-up emails.

Here are the major types of ecommerce personalization:

• Product recommendations: Those "You might also like" suggestions and recommended items based on your browsing and purchase history.
• Personalized emails: Tailored messages with items your customers have viewed, cart reminders, and offers based on their interests instead of generic blasts.
• Dynamic content: Website elements that change based on who's visiting, like showing winter gear to cold-climate customers or sales to bargain hunters.
• Personalized search results: Results that prioritize products your customers are likely to buy based on their past behavior and preferences.
• Customized landing pages: Home pages or landing pages that adapt to show your customers’ preferred brands, sizes, or categories.
• Behavioral targeting: Pop-ups and offers triggered by browsing behavior, like exit discounts or free shipping for hesitant shoppers.
• Location-based personalization: Content and offers tailored to geographic location — from local store stock to regional promotions.

Most customers (65%) stay loyal to businesses that offer a more personalized experience. Along with brand loyalty, here are a few other key ways that personalization benefits your business:

When customers see products that match their interests and needs, they're far more likely to make a purchase instead of choosing your competitor. Successful ecommerce businesses use tools like ‌customer relationship management (CRM) to understand customer behavior and preferences. This helps them remove the guesswork from shopping and meet evolving customer demands. Customers feel more valued and heard, and the following image shows this:

You’ll see a rise in conversion rates because it fundamentally changes how customers feel about your brand. Instead of feeling like an anonymous visitor scrolling endlessly, they build a genuine connection. Social media monitoring can help you analyze how customers are talking about your business online. And, you’ll get great feedback.

Personalized product recommendations act like a smart sales assistant, suggesting complementary items and upgrades that customers‌ want. For instance, if you buy running shoes, you may receive suggestions for matching socks, a fitness tracker, or running accessories. These are add-ons you genuinely may need. These relevant cross-sells and upsells feel helpful rather than pushy. So, they naturally encourage customers to add more to their cart, increasing the AOV.

A whopping 73% of customers expect businesses to meet their needs and expectations — that's more than what we expect from our best friends. But not meeting these needs can lead to shopping cart abandonment and missed opportunities. Personalization — small discounts, free shipping, or a gentle reminder that their favorite items are still waiting — can address this concern.

Pro tip? Tailor your follow-up approach to each customer's behavior and preferences. Your targeted interventions should feel more like helpful nudges than generic sales pitches. The goal is to make customers complete their purchase, and not mark you as spam.

Personalization is what makes customers remember you and choose your brand over competitors. For example, if you’re a pet parent, which store will turn you into ‌a loyal customer: One that shows generic content, promotions, and messaging that doesn’t differentiate between pet species, age, or size — or a site experience that reflects your specific needs as the owner of a 10-year-old dachshund named Achilles? Instead of promoting cat food to a dog owner, intelligent personalization makes it possible to promote offers like, "New toys perfect for Achilles’ size and age." By collecting details from customers and curating tailored commerce moments, you can drive revenue and beat the competition.

Creating unique customer journeys requires a few elements — from data to content. Here are five important ones:

1. Customer data collection: Gather insights from browsing behavior, purchase history, and customer interactions to build comprehensive user profiles. AI and machine learning (ML) can analyze data patterns and predict customer preferences.

2. Targeted content: Customize the content a user sees on a website — hero banners, product recommendations, geo-specific targeting, and more. For example, a returning customer might see a banner promoting a product category they've frequently browsed.

3. Dynamic pricing: Adjust product prices in real-time based on customer location, browsing behavior, or loyalty status. Consider offering returning customers a special discount or providing loyalty members with exclusive pricing to encourage purchases.

4. A/B testing: Continuously test different personalized approaches and marketing campaigns to improve conversion rates and measure the effectiveness of your personalization strategy.

5. Privacy management: Handle customer data while respecting privacy preferences and regulatory requirements. Sales shouldn’t come at the expense of losing customer trust.

Ecommerce personalization leads to happier customers and more revenue. But successful personalization efforts require careful planning, the right technology, and clear goals. Here are a few tips that will help you do it right.

Your ecommerce platform can make or break your success when it comes to digital sales. A platform with scalable personalization capabilities and built-in AI make delivering tailored shopping experiences easier (without costly add-ons). A unified platform (one that connects digital channels with point-of-sale and order management) will help you create consistent experiences across the entire customer journey. This way, you can accurately segment your customers and run meaningful, high-converting promotions no matter where they engage.

Measuring what matters should be the cornerstone of your ecommerce strategy. So define your objectives and ecommerce metrics before diving in. Consider setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound (SMART) goals. For example, your goal could be to "increase the average order value by 15% within the next six months by implementing personalized product recommendations."

This approach makes sure your personalization efforts are tied to tangible business outcomes like increased conversion rates, customer retention, or revenue.

Successful personalization starts with clean, accurate data. When your marketing, merchandising, IT, and ecommerce teams all work from the same single source of truth, they can create harmonious, highly relevant customer experiences. A unified commerce approach to ecommerce makes this possible. When you can easily connect the dots between digital and in-store channels and across every touchpoint, you can see the entire customer journey in context.

AI makes it possible to deliver tailored experiences to thousands (or millions) of customers in real time. It can quickly analyze browsing behavior, purchase history, and preferences to recommend products, personalize marketing messages, and optimize pricing far beyond what humans could do alone, manually. When marketing, merchandising, and commerce teams have access to AI, you can scale personalization intelligently, improve conversion rates, and operational efficiency.

What works for other brands might not work for you. So, A/B testing helps you understand what resonates with your audience. Test different recommendations, email marketing campaigns, storefront layouts, checkout processes, and pricing strategies.

Pro tip? Start with simple tests like personalized versus generic product recommendations. For example, showing “recently viewed items” versus “best-sellers” on your ecommerce site, or sending targeted emails based on past purchases instead of blanket promotional campaigns. Then gradually experiment with more sophisticated approaches like dynamic pricing based on browsing behavior. Continuous testing turns good personalization into great personalization.

Like all good things, even ecommerce personalization needs some ground rules. Here are a few to follow:

Respect privacy. Stay ethical and transparent by explaining what data you collect and how you use it, while complying with privacy laws like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Also, give customers control access to manage their data and communication settings. This builds trust and shows you respect their choices.

Be relevant and timely. Effective personalization is all about ‌perfect timing. If someone just browsed camera lenses, send them a discount on that specific lens within hours, not a generic camera promotion next week. Similarly, a dynamic home page that shows winter coats to someone in Chicago during December, feels genuinely helpful rather than random.

Personalize without overwhelming. Make sure your ecommerce store isn’t cluttered with six different "recommended for you" sections. Focus on offering relevant suggestions on product pages, and well-timed cart reminders. Test and optimize your personalization strategies to find the right balance, making your efforts feel helpful rather than intrusive.

The future of ecommerce personalization is getting exciting‌ — ‌and a little scary in how well it'll know us. Look out for these trends:

Conversational commerce will make shopping effortless‌ — ‌snap a photo of someone's cool jacket and instantly find where to buy it, or just tell your phone "I need something for my date night" and get perfectly curated options. Your customers will talk to you like a friend and not a business, so make sure you’re conversing right back.

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are quickly moving from being cool tech demos to must-have shopping tools. There will be a rise in consumers trying on clothes, testing makeup shades through phone cameras, or seeing how certain decor pieces will look in a living room. This will also reduce customer frustrations and order returns because consumers know what they’re shopping for.

As third-party cookies disappear, you’ll need to get creative about collecting customer data, the honest way. This means relying more on what people‌ do on your site (first-party data) and what they willingly tell you through surveys or preference quizzes (zero-party data). The new rule? You'll have to earn customer information by offering real value in return, making trust-based personalization the only way forward.

While you’re at it, follow ethical AI practices and declare how your business uses AI. You want to be known as a trustworthy brand people talk about to their friends and colleagues.

Commerce Cloud makes it possible to scale personalization with a unified platform that connects customer data, AI-driven insights, and omni-channel commerce capabilities. At its core, Commerce Cloud enables brands to deliver personalized experiences across every touchpoint — web, mobile, social, and in-store — by using a central data foundation and powerful automation tools. With built-in access to Salesforce’s broader ecosystem, including Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud, you gain a single view of each customer. This way, you’ll drive consistent, relevant interactions throughout the entire customer journey.