Are you tired of leaving money on the table by not recommending the perfect products to your customers?
Look no further, because this beginner's guide on product recommendations for Shopify will have you and your customers saying "I didn't know I needed that, but now I can't live without it!"
Psst… I’ll also share a secret tip on how you can leverage WhatsApp as a channel to recommend products and drive sales.
Get ready to increase sales and improve the customer experience on your Shopify store.
But first… let’s take a step back and dig into why you should care about recommending products.
4 reasons to recommend products on Shopify
Did you know? Personalised product recommendations account for 27% of ecommerce revenue.
While your end goal is to generate those extra bucks through recommendations, you must focus on understanding customer needs first. Then you can tailor the shopping experience to pitch the relevant products to the customer.
This personalised experience will help you in
Increased sales: Product recommendations help drive extra sales by suggesting relevant products to customers based on their browsing and purchase history. Stating the obvious, I know. But you’d be surprised by how many stores don’t recommend products even though it can lead to higher revenue.
Increased customer engagement: Personalised recommendations encourage your customers to spend more time browsing and discovering new products on your site.
(Don’t you do the same on leading e-commerce stores?)
Increased cross-selling and upselling: By recommending related or complementary products, you increase the chances of customers making additional purchases that are useful to them.
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Improved customer loyalty: Personalized recommendations can help build customer loyalty by making it easy for customers to find the products they want.
Enough of dreams! Let’s start working. Shall we?
Now, the question is, should you just start recommending products here and there?
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The most important thing before recommending products is to make sure you understand your customers. You wouldn’t be able to connect with them unless you know them.
Understanding Your Audience
Understanding the demographics and preferences of your audience can help you tailor the recommendations to meet their needs better. This is going to help you provide the best possible personalized recommendations during multiple shopping stages.
Additionally, analyzing purchase history and behaviour can provide valuable insights into customer preferences and buying habits, allowing you to make more informed decisions about product demand and development, marketing campaigns and inventory management.
(Take it as becoming the Google of your store. Got the joke? Good.)
This is particularly beneficial for direct-to-consumer (D2C) stores like yours as you can better target products to specific audiences and increase chances of success.
Great! we’ve finally dug the well. Let’s see what to fill in it now.
Choosing the Right Products to Recommend
When it comes to D2C brands, recommending the right products to customers is of paramount importance. To build a successful recommendation engine, you need to carefully consider many factors, especially how well a product is selling and how relevant and compatible it is with your customers.
For e.g, you’re looking to buy shorts for an upcoming local marathon. Considering your choice of shorts, the brand may suggest you buy that good-looking light green sporty t-shirt. You may end up buying that t-shirt too as you’re shopping with that mindset to buy sporty stuff.
But assuming the same example, would you buy a belt for your formal wear while shopping for that marathon? I guess you know the answer.
To begin with, you should take stock of how often a product has been viewed, added to a customer's cart, and ultimately purchased. This information serves as a barometer for gauging customer preferences and can provide valuable insights into which products are most likely to make your pockets heavy.
Additionally, you must give due consideration to determining product relevancy and compatibility. This entails taking into account a customer's browsing and purchase history, as well as their demographics and preferences.
For instance, if a customer has a penchant for a particular hobby or interest, it would be wise to recommend products that align with said hobby or interest. Furthermore, if a customer has a history of purchasing a specific type of product, it is logical to recommend similar products of the same genre.
Lastly, it's important to keep in mind the price of the product. Recommendations should be in line with the customer's budget and spending habits.
In conclusion, the art of recommending the right products to customers is a delicate balancing act that requires careful consideration of product popularity and sales performance, product relevancy and compatibility, and of course, price. By adhering to these principles, you can ensure to provide customers with products that are both relevant and likely to drive sales.
We’re done with the basics now. Let’s do some technical things on the store to feel like a D2C marketer.
How to implement product recommendations on Shopify?
There are two ways to recommend products on Shopify:
1. Recommendations on the product page
2. Recommendations on WhatsApp
Let’s get into each of them.
1. Recommendations on the product page
Step 1: In the Shopify Search & Discovery app, click Product recommendations and then click Add recommendations.
Step 2: Select a product that you want to customize product recommendations for.
Step 3: Select up to 10 Complementary products.
Step 4: Select up to 10 Related products to recommend.
Step 5: Set the product to display only the custom recommendations or to display both custom recommendations and automatically generated recommendations.
Step 6: Click ‘Save’.
Now your customers would see those recommendations on that product page.
But, is there a more efficient & effective way to recommend products that can help you generate 10-15% additional sales?
You should leverage WhatsApp marketing with BiteSpeed.
2. Recommendations on WhatsApp
Why use WhatsApp to recommend products from Shopify?
Because it's where your customers are! WhatsApp boasts over 2 billion monthly active users, making it one of the most widely used messaging platforms in the world.
By leveraging this popular communication tool, you can tap into a vast audience and drive sales by sending personalized product recommendations straight to customers' phones.
Plus, with the WhatsApp Catalogue feature, customers can easily access your store and purchase with just a few taps. It's a no-brainer!
Personalised & interactive messaging (message with buttons) combined with a shopping assistance chatbot on WhatsApp would become your go-to channel to recommend products.
Read: D2C brands on BiteSpeed are leveraging WhatsApp to recommend products and generate an additional 18% in revenue. [Case Study]
How BiteSpeed helps with product recommendations-
This strategy begins when the customer places their order. You can knock on their door with an order receipt and ask them to get another order from you. You can give them a discount to convince them to immediately get their hands on their product.
With BiteSpeed, you can create a workflow like If they order X, recommend Y. Set up the workflow and watch your D2C store do all the hard work by itself!
It gets triggered when the customer places their order and follows them with a message to recommend a product they think they will like.
If manual setting seems time-consuming, you can automate that using BiteSpeed. You can also set a workflow to trigger the message based on cart or order value. That way, you can recommend products aligned with their purchase decision.
Additionally, you can set up customer support on WhatsApp via BiteSpeed’s chatbot flow builder and multi-agent dashboard to quickly answer queries about the products.
Fast customer support will not only help you upsell, and cross-sell these recommended products but also make your customers connected with your brand.
We’re already working with 2000+ leading D2C brands. Let’s chat and we’ll show you how you can accelerate your revenue with WhatsApp.
Optimizing Recommendations for Maximum Impact
As the saying goes, "practice makes perfect", and this couldn't be more true when it comes to product recommendations for D2C brands. By optimizing recommendations for maximum impact, you can get maximum bang for the buck.
One key aspect of this optimization process is A/B testing different recommendation strategies. This allows you to compare the performance of different approaches and identify which strategies are most effective. By continually testing and refining their recommendations through performance testing services, you can improve the overall performance of your product recommendations engine.
Additionally, analyzing and adjusting recommendations based on customer engagement and sales is crucial. By tracking how customers engage with recommended products, you gain valuable insights into what is resonating with the audience, and what isn't. This information can then be used to adjust recommendations and improve the chances of making a sale.
Conclusion
Here are 8 important takeaways from what we’ve learned about recommending products on Shopify:
1. Tailor recommendations to individual customers by considering their browsing and purchase history, demographics, and preferences.
2. Use A/B testing to compare the performance of different recommendation strategies and fine-tune recommendations for optimal results.
3. Continuously monitor customer engagement and sales data to adjust recommendations and improve performance.
5. Leverage WhatsApp for reaching customers and recommending products.
6. Optimize the product's price with the customer's budget and spending habits.
7. Make sure to use witty and casual language while recommending products to make it more engaging.
8. Keep track of the recommended products, conversion rates and customer behaviour and fine-tune the settings and recommendations to optimize the performance.
BiteSpeed: Multi-Channel Support & WhatsApp marketing For Shopify Stores
BiteSpeed is built for Shopify stores and comes with advanced conversational marketing features such as cart recovery campaigns, upsell & cross-selling campaigns, WhatsApp chatbot builder, and a WhatsApp catalogue.
Leveraging these features will give your store a boost in revenue and brand engagement.
So what are you waiting for?Kick the tires and book a demo to see how BiteSpeed can drive up to 20% more revenue to your Shopify store.
