Boost sales on your Magento store with Product Recommendations

Customers are intrinsic to your Magento store. With customer experience becoming a major focus of a business, giving your customers what they want is important.

Using Product recommendations you can personalize the shopping experience for your customers while exposing them to more products from your store based on the product/s they have indicated interest in.

What are Product Recommendations?

Product recommendations are algorithms that automatically suggest a list of relevant products to each customer who visits your Magento store based on the products they are looking for. They have become popular on eCommerce websites as they improve a customer’s experience by displaying relevant items at the right time and on the right page.

Why does your Magento store need product recommendations?

The advantages of having product recommendations are:

• Personalize every customer’s experience – you can track your customer’s shopping behaviour and set up personal recommendations. This helps give your customers the feeling that the business is giving them attention.
• Help select the best products with minimal effort –analyse product performance and create a list of most popular products to attract customers.
• Increase customer loyalty – make your customer feel happy by suggesting products which are “just for them”. This helps make your customer feel important and not only want to continue to support your store but also recommend your store to friends.

What are the different types of Product Recommendations?

There are 2 types of product recommendations that can be included on your Magento store are:

• Generic Product recommendations – based on aggregation of data
• Personalized Product recommendations – based on the shopping behaviour and preferences of a customer

Most eCommerce stores have some form of the generic product recommendations. But product recommendations have moved from basic to that based on customer behaviour and this brings in Personalized product recommendations.

Generic Product Recommendations

These are based on aggregated data of actions of previous visitors to your Magento website. Just like customers trust reviews from previous visitors, these recommendations endorse products purchased by previous visitors. Some of the generic product recommendations found on eCommerce websites are

• Best sellers – A strategic sale method to showcase products that customers would love to buy from your Magento store. Best sellers provide inspiration to customers about the popular products of your online store. Featuring best sellers on the homepage of your Magento store is an effective tactic to give your customers a better understanding of your product offerings.

These are useful when you do not have enough data of a particular customer to show then personalized products.

• Trending items – Featuring a list of trending products on your Magento store is a way to display some real-time recommendations. Basically they show the customer what is popular at this instant.
  
• New arrivals/Latest Products – These are product recommendations that showcase the new products on your Magento store. These can be seasonal products in the case of a clothing store, new models in the case of a mobile store, etc. New arrivals are similar to your best sellers and are easy to identify as the latest products in your catalog.
• Top rated – Featuring a list of products that have a high rating based on reviews provided by customers to your store. These product recommendations reinforce products in your brand to other customers.
  
• Sales and promotions – These include list of products on offer and deals of the day.
  

Personalized Product Recommendations

Personalized products recommendations are based on the shopping behaviour of the customer on your Magento store. If you can make your customers feel that you have understood their needs and that you care about their interest, you increase the chances of having a satisfied customer who will retain the connection with your online store.

• Similar Products – If your customer is researching and deciding among the products on your Magento store, you can promote alternatives so as to keep them browsing on your store instead of abandoning your store for your competitor’s store. It matches products that are similar to the one your customer is viewing and displays them next to each other.
• Related Products (Upsell) – The display of products is based on the products your customers are looking at or the products they previously bought. This method can be used to display products that have additional features and a higher price point next to similar products; thereby tempting your customers to spend more. For example, displaying a Samsung S9 mobile when your customer is looking at a Samsung S8.
  
• Complimentary products (Cross-Sell) – This product recommendation can be used to increase your customer’s interest in other products on your Magento store and thereby increase the average order value. For example, displaying a clutch to go with a handbag.
  
• Recently Viewed – These product recommendations are very useful to visitors who are researching and browsing the products on your Magento store; and later want to find more information about the product. It helps them track their search history and not have to try to again locate a product that they are interested in.
  
• Recommended for you – These are product recommendations that are based on the previous purchases and personal preferences the customer of your Magento store. They are highly relevant to your customer. Most of the big eCommerce websites such as Amazon and eBay use this recommendation; displaying a range of products from different categories their customer has been browsing.
• Customer who bought this item also bought – This product recommendation can be used to offer suggestions after your customer has decided to purchase a particular item. The suggestions are based on other customer’s purchases and will be viewed as reliable and trustworthy.

A variation of this product recommendation can be – Customers Who Viewed this Item Also Viewed.

• Frequently bought together – The main aim of this recommendation is to increase the average order value. These can be used to upsell and cross-sell products on your Magento store by suggesting items based on your customer’s cart. For example, when your customer adds an iPhone 8 to their cart, you can suggest that the iPhone is usually bought with a case and earphone.

Conclusion

Dynamic product recommendations are very important as they introduce visitors to relevant items in a quick and easy manner, and create a better customer experience. They help in increasing customer engagement, conversions, click-through from emails, average order value, loyalty, and retention.

The items recommended must be automatically personalized based on the customers’ behaviour so that they are relevant and match the customers’ preferences.

But keep in mind that your Magento store is unique with a unique branding, audience, and products. Therefore, the product recommendations you use must match all of these.