E-commerce: Recommendations can Get You Both Sales and Unsubscriptions

Online shopping has become a part of our daily routine. According to SEO Companies, 31% of the online shoppers place an order every week. This does not come as a shock because browsing the online shopping apps is our favorite time pass too.

What makes you shop from a shopping site more frequently than other sites?

This may be the services, products, delivery time, the secure packaging or the lowest prices. You have your reasons. The online portals also target your reasons by providing even better services in the future. They keep improving according to the reviews. They keep the prices affordable in the world of competition and they recommend you relevant products to help you decide faster.

Recommendations… This article is all about the recommendations; the right recommendations and the wrong recommendations.

Let us understand the difference based on two stories.

Case 1:

Marium is like any ordinary girl who loves shopping. She usually shops from a shopping site because she trusts them. She has recently purchased a pair of jeans from the same site. She is very much happy with the purchase. Just when she opens the email informing about the delivery, she is recommended some accessories. The email is showcasing the shoes that go well with the pair of jeans. It also has a belt which compliments the jeans. What would be the reaction of Marium? She is thrilled. She is finding the recommendations relevant because the shoes and belt are great.

Even when she didn’t intend to purchase them in the first place, she readily clicks on the link and purchases the suggested products. So, the right recommendations get you the sales.

Case 2:

Sharon is an online shopping enthusiast too. She is not loyal to any website because for her, the price and the quality matter the most. She just purchases things at the best price, no matter from where. She recently purchased a pair of jeans too. She is happy with the purchase. From the day she placed the order, she is sent the emails recommending more jeans from the same brand. The email is received twice a week. She just purchased the jeans why would she purchase more? If she needed, she would have done that in the first order.

It’s been three weeks and she is done with the recommendations. There are so many shopping websites, there is no need to put up with the irritating emails from that shopping portal. She just hit the ‘unsubscribe’ button. So, wrong recommendations get you unsubscriptions.

Hope these two cases make everything clear for you. It is very important for an e-commerce site to know the immediate requirements of a customer. All the recommendations should be based on these requirements. Do not send pesky emails suggesting the same thing that the customer has just purchased, instead recommend the complimentary products. The key to driving traffic to the website and to get sales is appropriate recommendations. Do not automate the recommendations literary, rather use the relational and contextual automation.

According to the top 10 SEO Firms, it is not possible to know the requirements of every individual, as such the recommendations should be based on the product pages that the customer visited before making the purchase. It should also include the products that other customers usually buy with the products purchased. This would help you cross-sell the products which the customer did not intend to purchase.

Are you an e-commerce firm? How do you recommend related products to your customers? Is any of the strategy working out for you? Please write us and give your suggestions.