One of the hazards of product recommendations is that you may suggest the wrong thing. But online shoppers love product recommendations, so it is helpful to use them. And they can be great marketing tools. The key is personalized product recommendations.

E-Consultancy offers some interesting numbers regarding product recommendations:

• High spenders (69 percent of those who spent more than $1,000 in the last six months) are more likely to make purchases at ecommerce sites that offer personalized suggestions. You can draw more big spenders to your Web site with the help of personalized suggestions.
• Poor recommendations mean that some (39 percent) are unlikely to return to an ecommerce site. So if you provide poor recommendations, says E-Consultancy, you may find yourself worse off than offering no recommendations at all. Poor recommendations include items that a customer has already bought or items that the customer isn’t actually interested in.

Customer service, as you know, is all about catering to the customer. It’s clear that customers enjoy personalized product suggestions. And this means you can boost your sales by steering visitors to buy additional merchandise with product recommendations. But you have to make sure the products are appropriate (men don’t want recommendations for handbags), and you want to ensure that the products match the interests of your customers.

Toffer Winslow, of ChoiceStream, pointed this out on E-Consultancy:

“Personalized recommendations are table stakes in today’s competitive e-commerce environment. But retailers that provide customers with poor quality recommendations are putting their brand and revenue at risk.”

Tags: ecommerce site, personalized suggestions, ecommerce blog, online shoppers,
marketing tools