Author: Nosto Team, May 15, 2025
What's important to note is that today's consumers don't just expect seamless shopping experiences. They expect shopping experiences that are also intuitive to their individual needs. That's where eCommerce personalisation comes in.
Personalisation is no longer a luxury—it's a necessity. Modern consumers want their shopping journey to feel effortless, relevant, and tailored to them. Brands that can meet these expectations will see higher engagement, improved conversions, and stronger customer loyalty.
We spoke to the personalisation experts over at Nosto (a Commerce Experience platform and Shopify Plus partner) to dive into what personalisation really is, how it enhances the shopping experience, and the different types of on-site personalisation that brands can yield to drive online growth.
What is eCommerce Personalisation?
Ecommerce personalisation is about tailoring the online shopping experience to individual preferences and behaviors. It works by using shopper data—browsing behaviour, purchase history, demographics, and more—to dynamically adjust products, merchandising, and content in real-time.
Every shopper is unique. And while it might seem impossible to personalise experiences for thousands (or millions) of customers, AI-driven personalisation makes it not only possible, but scalable.
For instance, modern-day technology will give you the ability to group shoppers into audience 'segments'. So you might have a segment based on lifecycle stage (e.g. first-time visitors), for instance, or category affinity (e.g. has viewed/bought items from your 'dresses' category). Once brands create these segments, they can then create specific experiences for shoppers that fall into them.
Good personalisation tech will also let you leverage your product intelligence when creating personalisation campaigns. For instance, it will help you distinguish your top-performing products from slow movers so you can take action such as featuring those 'best-selling' items within campaigns (quick tip: this is a good one to use for first-time visitors).
Now let's take a look at the different personalised experiences you can create..
How Personalisation Enhances UX and Business Growth
Here are some of the key ways brands can integrate personalisation into their UX strategy for measurable impact:
1. Product Recommendations: Boosting Relevant Product Discovery
Product recommendations are a tried-and-tested way to highlight relevant products at key points of the shopper journey, including:
- Homepage
- Product detail pages (PDPs)
- Search results pages
- Category pages
- Shopping cart page or mini-cart drawer
- Checkout page
- 404 pages
- Pop-ups
- Marketing emails
By leveraging AI, brands can dynamically display relevant products based on shopper behavior. First-time visitors might see bestsellers, while returning customers may get recommendations based on past purchases.
Metrics impacted: Click-through rate, conversion rate, average order value, bounce rate, repeat purchase rate.
2. Personalised Emails: Re-engaging Shoppers
Beyond the website, personalised email flows help bring shoppers back to the store by responding to their on-site behavior:
- Abandoned Cart Emails – A timely reminder to complete the purchase.
- Post-Purchase Emails – Thank-you messages with personalised product suggestions.
- Re-Engagement Emails – Recommendations based on past browsing history.
Metrics impacted: Email open rate, email click-through rate, website traffic, cart abandonment rate, CLTV.
3. Personalised Merchandising: Streamlining Product Discovery
Merchandising is about controlling product sorting on listing pages, ensuring customers see what's most relevant to them. AI-driven merchandising factors in shopper preferences, affinities, and product performance metrics to optimise sorting.
For brands with large catalogs or heavy mobile traffic, personalisation ensures that shoppers find what they need faster and with fewer clicks.
Metrics impacted: Product click-through rate, conversion rate, bounce rate.
4. Content Personalisation: Beyond Products
Ecommerce personalisation isn't just about product discovery. It also involves tailoring content across the store based on the customer lifecycle stage or individual affinities:
- Homepage Banners: Displaying different collections based on past browsing.
- FOMO Messaging on PDPs: Highlighting stock levels or recent product views to window shoppers.
- Loyalty Program Messaging: Targeting members with reward prompts and non-members with enrollment incentives.
Metrics impacted: Click-through rate, conversion rate, bounce rate, and more depending on the strategy (e.g. increase in loyalty program membership for content promoting that).
Personalisation: See it in action
So, you now have an overview of the different types of personalisation campaigns that can be implemented. But you might be curious to see how other brands are leveraging this on their ecommerce stores.
Good news: we have a Commerce Experience Examples hub on our website packed with live brand examples. From strategic personalised merchandising to hyper-targeted recommendations, there's plenty to get inspired so go check them out.
In short
In summary, ecommerce personalisation significantly enhances user experience. By delivering unique experiences that align with shoppers' varied interests, you're allowing people to more easily find what they're looking for, and discover additional relevant items along the way.
The result? Higher conversions, increased customer loyalty, and greater profitability.
Keen to get started with personalisation?
If you're sold on the benefits but would like to learn more about the specific use cases or tactics that would be relevant for your business and help you drive growth, the Nosto team would be happy to chat.