KNOWING WHAT YOUR SHOPPERS WANT BEFORE THEY DO

KNOWING WHAT YOUR SHOPPERS WANT BEFORE THEY DO

Knowing What Your Shoppers Want Before They Do 1 Most people visiting a digital store are trying to do one of two things. They are either buying or shopping. On the outside, these two activities seem pretty similar and most retailers don t recognize the difference. That s a big mistake. Buyers are Hunting A buyer knows exactly what they want. They ve already done their research and they are now in hunting mode, seeking the cheapest source with the best shipping deal. Modern ecommerce has made their life duck soup. A consumer knows everything about those noise cancelling headphones they want to buy. And in less time than it used to take to download a whole album from itunes, those headphones are at their doorstep. Over the past 15 years, ecommerce has (almost) perfected the buying experience. So much attention has been placed on getting buying right that the industry has all but neglected shopping.

Knowing What Your Shoppers Want Before They Do 2 Shoppers are Fishing If we call buyers hunters - with an exact target in mind, then shoppers are fishers - trolling for something that catches their attention. Although they might have some kind of vague idea in their mind, most people visit an online store without a specific plan for what they are going to buy. They spend long, valuable periods of time floating around your site in search of something they re not even sure exists. All the benefits of buyer conveniences like an easy checkout process and fast shipping aren t terribly relevant until later in the process. At this early shopping stage you want to employ age old retail magic and help the shopper discover a very good catch. Retailers should never underestimate the fact that shopping is meant to be a discovery process. The question is how to encourage, rather than discourage it. Does Your Site Discourage Shopping? WHEN IT COMES TO FINDING THE THINGS THEY WANT, SHOPPERS NEED YOUR HELP. While perhaps very good for buying, the environments that most digital retailers have created are not conducive to shopping. Visitors don t easily see most of their options. They are forced to sift through pages of often irrelevant, uninspiring items and that element of enjoyable exploration goes right out the window. The burden is on the shopper to remember images of items they liked and even page numbers so that once they re in buying mode they can return to that item they kind of liked. In truth, shopping online can be a challenge for the most intrepid of shoppers. The Secret to Getting Shopping Right When it comes to finding the things they want, shoppers need your help. But to hold their attention and keep them interested you have to help them in the right kind of way. But how the hell can you do that, when in most scenarios the shopper doesn t even know what it is they want? The simple answer is that you need to actually know what the shopper wants before they do. Knowing What Shoppers Want Before They Do Yes that simple answer is not always seen as a simple solution, but take a step back for a second and realize something. As the retailer, you have all the

Knowing What Your Shoppers Want Before They Do 3 information you need to anticipate exactly what each shopper wants. These aren t mind reading techniques or mysticism, we are simply using data. Data that s sitting right in front of you. The moment a shopper visits your site and starts clicking and searching for products and categories, they are providing hints that can be used to solve this puzzle of what they might want and how you can guide them to it. Each product they select is full of attributes (gender, length, material, category, brand, etc.). As the shopper selects a few more items, they reveal patterns about their tastes and interests that often times the shopper isn t even aware of themselves. When you match that developing set of preferences with the retailer s full product inventory, it is easy to see how a smart retailer can start curating and scoring the items that the shopper is most likely interested in. (See diagram on next page.) Why The Individual Matters IS NOT STATIC. BY DEFINITION, SHOPPER INTENT The key to all this is that we are focused on one single individual. We aren t trying to target a large group of what we perceive to be similar people with similar tastes (a segment). This idea of anticipating what the shopper wants is all about that singular shopper, their specific interests, and their current need. The retailer in this scenario is really responding to the individual intent of the shopper. This strategy is often called Individualization because it s not something you can get from a segment or cohort. Why Real Time Matters By definition, shopper intent is not static. With few exceptions, people s thoughts about what they want are changing constantly (sometimes even within the same shopping session). So to get shopping right, retailers need to act in real time. This means responding to each click intelligently and in the moment. There is an important distinction here that is sometimes overlooked. Many personalization tools claim to respond in real time, but in reality all they have to offer is a set of pre-meditated responses to certain clicks. These faux realtime responses don t take the current intent of that individual into account with real-time intelligent presentations.

4 FIRST CLICK 9 12 10 15 8 SECOND CLICK 43 46 48 45 50 THIRD CLICK 79 82 85 78 76 Every product has a conversion score that s uniquely calculated for each individual shopper. That score is reassigned every time the shopper clicks. In this example, the shopper is looking for a stylish wear to work dress, but is also appropriate for dinner after. Ultimately, the last suggestions are dresses that are black, sleeveless, and above the knees.

Knowing What Your Shoppers Want Before They Do 5 To succeed in knowing what the shopper wants before they do, you need to constantly take into account each of their individual actions on your site. Simultaneously, you need to respond with intelligent merchandising that s based on that individual and their unique set of interests. It s Technical, But It s Actually Retail In It s Most Basic Form THE AVERAGE REVENUE PER VISIT INCREASE FOR ECOMMERCE SITES THAT IMPLEMENT INDIVIDUALIZATION IS OVER 20%. This all might sound like science fiction, but in reality it s really just an emulation of what retailers do everyday and have been doing for decades in brick and mortar scenarios. Take for example an associate at a men s apparel store engaging with a customer. If the customer asks about linen and mentions that he s going to Thailand next week, the associate knows to lead him to resortwear. If a baby blue sweater catches the customer s eye on the way to the other end of the store, the associate can start thinking of linen and resortwear that are in a bright color pallette. If he asks about suits, the associate can present linen or lightweight suits. Within about sixty seconds, the associate can figure out what items in the store s inventory will most likely get that specific customer excited. He knows what the customer wants before the customer does. The Bottom Line: How Knowing What Your Shopper Wants Affects Your Business What can you expect in terms of results from Individualization? What s interesting is that regardless of the category, number of SKUs or even the average order value, there is a fairly consistent business impact. The average revenue per visit increase for ecommerce sites that implement Individualization is over 20%. While that number is large, it makes sense. Shoppers are finding what they want more often because sites that use Individualization are tailoring their merchandising across the site experience (site search results, homepages, product detail pages, etc.) to anticipate what each of their individual visitors want. Knowing what your customer wants before they do doesn t require any magic, it just requires a new focus on what each individual shopper is already telling you about their interests every day. If you can listen to those shopper tells and respond intelligently, you will dramatically impact your business.

Knowing What Your Shoppers Want Before They Do 6 About Reflektion Reflektion drives millions of incremental conversion events for leading retailers of all sizes, including Disney, Converse, Uniqlo, and O Neill. Reflektion enables digital retailers to capture and respond to each individual shopper s intent in real time, which increases customer conversions and retailer revenue by over 20%. The company is backed by leading investors including Intel Capital and Nike. Reflektion is the 2015 winner of Shop.org s Digital Commerce Start Up of the Year award. 650-293-0800 sales@