Personalization is firming its foot in the industry, but until a few years ago, product customization was limited to a small group of items and brands. In that era, product customization was available for gifting items, marketing merchandise or showcase products. With time, a lot has changed and many online retailers have started investing in customized products. Retailers of almost everything, including from apparel to handbags and footwear, are exploring the value and benefits of product customization.
What is Product Customization?
In today’s world where everyone is looking to shop everything online and online retailers allow their customers to shop item of customer’s choice at the comfort of their house. The boost in the number of online stores enables customers to choose from a wide array of purchasing options.
To serve customers, it is important to understand them and this is where the option of product customization comes into play where you allow your customers to design their own product. Companies that facilitate product customization can create, alter and market their products to the customer’s desires. With the revolution of Big Data, manufacturers, retailers and online stores are finding ingenious ways to serve their customers with personalized products and services. Product customization adds several benefits and usually leads to higher conversion rates.
Here are some points about how product customization can help your business to grow:
Stand Ahead of Competition
This is an era of commercials which means there are overloaded of products and services in the market. Online shoppers know that they have options available to compare the cost of products very easily. Offering product personalization gives your business the opportunity to stand out from the competition by fine-tuning products and services. Product customization is an ultimate way to segregate your items and services from the products of your competitors.
Improved Customer Engagement and Loyalty
Offering customized products is a major stepping stone for achieving high levels of customer loyalty and trust. The unique products have more demand and get noticed easily. Product customization caters to this need. They align products with core character value and traits of the user and facilitate individual touch. At the same time, customization gives a strong sense of ownership.
Abundance and Individuality
Evolution in modern e-commerce enables buyers to buy their personalized products without putting much effort. Decoding consumer-choice and bundling is a form of product personalization that chains individuality and the requirement for products to be available in stock. Few brands have taken item customization one step ahead and even give buyers the freedom to create a unique design, completely customized product that will be built to buy. Users can generally select from a range of attributes that can be incorporated into the basic design of the product.
Improve Customer Retention
An increase in the conversion rates is great, but for the long run, your business needs something more. Improving recurring conversion, client retention and advocacy is the key to the success of your online business. According to research conducted by a well-known organization shows that after-sale loyalty programs that include personalized offers are one of the important attributes when it comes to inspiring repeat purchases. Customer retention is based on forging durable customer-brand familiarity and relationships. Customization is one such way to nurture these two important foundation stones of customer loyalty.
Product Customization is a Breeze with Technology
The revolution in technology is undoubtedly one of the major reasons behind the growing demand for mass product customization. By simply integrating plug-and-play product customization software to your current website or content management system facilitate you to gather crucial data about your customers. Online activities, product preferences and demographics are just a few of striking instances.
User-friendliness and Transparency
The two major aspects of product customization are user-friendliness and transparency. Are you also looking to offer product customization on your web-store? The first thing you need to consider is the platform you are going to provide them to design their product should be simple and easy to use. It should include design templates as well as options to edit/add basic elements such as text, clipart, color, etc. If the designing process is unattractive, difficult or complicated, a lot of potential customers will be turned off and leave your website without purchasing from your store. An efficient return process is also a crucial fact for any web-store that looking to offer product personalization. A survey suggests that people do not prefer to shop if they get the vibe of getting stuck with a product that they don’t like.
Personalize Touch to the Marketing
By offering a customized shopping experience, especially a predictive one, online retailers and brands hold an opportunity to separate themselves from the others. This can be one of the most important assets in the increasingly overcrowded world of product, services and choices.
Customization and personalization are the new trends to achieve success when it comes to providing a better customer experience. So don’t over-think and hesitate to incorporate this into your business. Take your online store to the next level by adding a touch of personal finesse!
