For many years people have been trying to find out how to ensure customer satisfaction. Nowadays, we are more aware that it is very difficult to predict human behaviour, and concepts such as “homo economicus” and “black box” theories seem to be on the decline. But there is a way to better understand your clients, and thereby generate more effective, personalised offers. The method depends on constant observation, analysis, and improvement.
Initial Steps
First of all, you have to answer two questions which are crucial for effective personalisation in your online shop:
• Do you know your content?
• Do you know your visitors?
Most retailers are able to answer “yes” to the first question, but the second question can be very tricky. Retailers often believe that they know their customers, and think they do not need to put any effort into further investigation. The truth is that every retailer should spend significant time building customer insights. One needs more information than just demographic characteristics. You should consider dividing your customers into psychological segments.
What now?
Assuming that you already have sufficient information about your content, and that your customers have been properly defined, you are now ready to start merchandising campaigns targeted precisely to your shop’s visitors. An excellent way to start is to use the FACT-Finder Campaign Manager. With the Campaign Manager, you can easily respond individually to each customer’s actions within the shop.
Don’t forget to analyse
When your merchandising campaigns are up and running, you should analyse how effective they actually are. For this purpose you can use the FACT-Finder Analytics Centre. The Analytics Centre permits you to monitor on-site search term revenue through logfile analysis, and it generates current trend reports.
Time to improve
Armed with knowledge about the results of your marketing activities, you can evaluate which actions should be repeated and what could be enhanced. This is your opportunity to improve and refine.
In a nutshell, you need to:
• learn about your content
• gather customer insights
• merchandise with a focus on the customer
• analyse the results of your actions
• draw conclusions
• improve and refine
These steps will certainly help you to understand what makes your customers tick, and thus to create suitable merchandising campaigns that will enhance customer satisfaction.