Idea Guide
Segmented Experiences Merchandising
Meanwhile, discover strategies to boost conversion rates, transaction size, and customer engagement in our Idea Guide.
A big part of merchandising comes down to setting up customer segments based on a customer’s browsing history, buying behavior, their referral source (such as a specific campaign, email, or URL), location, device, browser or other information you may know about them, such as their membership status.
A furniture store could highlight a customer’s specific décor style, such as ‘Beach House’, ‘Ski House’, or ‘Modern’, based on their past browsing and purchase behavior, on the home page hero image, text, and featured products. The store could take things further by A/B/n testing different images per segment to see the impact on bounce rates and conversions.
Give every customer their own unique home page experience based on their familiarity with your brand to catch their attention the second they arrive on your site.
With LimeSpot, you can customize the hero image, text, navigation, promotional banners, and other content blocks to adapt to each customer. Having segmented customer groups is the key to unlocking content personalization. We actually have an entire guide on ecommerce segmentation.
Create audience segments for your customers based on their browsing / buying preferences, referral source, or purchasing habits, etc. Then, use our Image or HTML Personalization features to swap out images, text, and any other HTML elements for each segment. Learn how to get started here.
Remember you can A/B/n test any element of Content Personalization on your site. So even within a single segment you can run two different images and / or calls-to-action, to see which one performs better to continually optimize your site experience for every user.
A sports equipment store could show a cycling image as the hero for customers who have purchased from their biking collections in the past, while immediately below that they could promote their kayaking collection. Customers who have bought from the kayaking collection would see the reverse order of collections, with kayaks featured up top, followed by cycling.
Change the order of information on the home page based on a customer's segment.
With this approach, you can have the same links and information available across every version of your home page, but presented in a different order based on a customer’s past browsing or buying behavior. You can use Content Personalization to change the image, text, CTAs, and any other HTML element on a webpage. You may want to change the order of your home page when, for example, you want to show different content on the desktop vs mobile versions of your site. You can even replace a section with ‘nothing’ and have that section disappear for certain customers or devices.
Use Image and HTML Personalization campaigns to swap out different content blocks. You can also use A/B/n testing to accomplish this for all users, for example, testing two different featured collections on the home page to see which one increases click-throughs and reduces bounce rates.
Creating segments ultimately means taking extra steps to personalize the customer's experience throughout their buying journey. Start broad with a couple of audience segments and continue building segments out based on purchasing behavior and sales strategies.
A fitness store could create a segment for customers who have bought products from their yoga collection. The next time the customer visits the 'What's New' section of the store, the collection will automatically have yoga items prioritized to appear at the top of the page, compared to the default sort order.
Dynamically curate any collection on your site depending on a customer’s browsing or buying behavior, and intent.
You can create audience segments to separate your customers based on how familiar they are with your brand and apply this knowledge to your collections. Using dynamic curated collections, you can personalize what products a specific collection should show and how those products should be sorted per audience segment. You can always have a default or ‘vanilla’ experience for customers that are net new to your site. But you can also create a slightly different experience for customers that have browsed or bought from your site before. For example, a customer who has bought New Balance shoes on a past visit to a sneaker store might be shown what’s new based on what’s been purchased in the past.
Create segments for customers who have browsed or purchased from your site. Then, use our curated collections feature to create collections based on shopper preferences, whether geared toward price point, brand, style, or some other consideration. You can also serve up a curated collection into recommendations boxes, as an easy way to customize ‘What’s New’ or ‘New For You’ on the home page. Learn how to get started here with our help center guide.
If you’re creating audience segments by product collection buying or browsing behavior, you’ll want to make sure you always have enough new products for a specific segment to really make this strategy work.
A clothing store could show winter boots and jackets for customers that have snowy winters, while showing lightweight packable windbreakers and standard athletic shoes for customers in more temperate climates.
Change featured images, content, and recommendations on the home page of your site to match a customer’s geographic region as it pertains to both climate and / or weather
If your store carries products that are suitable for certain climates or weather, the reality is there are some customers who will probably never buy particular items – like a parka for someone living in Florida. Geo-targeting your segments allows you to serve up products that match the temperature and weather a customer sees outside their front door. You can even segment audiences on a city or state level to zoom in on their specific short-term forecasts.
Create audience segments based on geo locations and alter the home page copy, CTA, featured collections, and recommendations using Image Personalization and Curated Collections.
This tactic works best for stores where the weather has a genuine impact on purchasing behaviors, such as footwear, outerwear, apparel, sports equipment, and outdoor gear. But don’t forget about other categories like skincare, vitamins, automotive accessories, hardware, bedding, and other product lines where colder, wintery climates might have different needs. Another angle? Think about urban versus rural customers and how their product preferences might differ.
A beauty store could serve up a text-based CTA for mobile customers that asks ‘What skin type are you?’ and prompts customers to take an online quiz. Desktop customers may instead see a lifestyle hero image with the same CTA.
Change the order of information based on the channel an audience is viewing your store.
Savvy retailers know that optimizing the mobile experience is key to conversions. Consider using quicker, text-based calls-to-action for mobile customers versus hero images and more recommendation types for a desktop customer.
You can customize both the desktop and mobile views of everything LimeSpot generates for your site. This includes using Content Personalization to hide a section for customers on desktop or mobile for a more streamlined user experience where appropriate.
Remember you can use A/B/n testing to explore how to improve both your desktop and mobile experiences. If something works great on desktop, give it a try on mobile against your existing mobile layout.
A furniture brand could prioritize the ‘Recent Views’ recommendations boxes on their home page for customers that have items in their cart but haven’t checked out, as well as add a ‘Welcome Back’ banner and ‘You May Also Like’ recommendations based on items currently in that customer’s cart.
Welcome customers back to your site that haven’t checked out yet with custom messaging and calls to action to complete their purchase.
You can use Segmented Experiences to change any HTML element of your site, including a message or callout that’s specifically geared toward people who have yet to checkout. Remind them there are items in their cart, offer them a coupon, or highlight additional items they should add to their cart before they finish shopping.
There are two ways to re-engage your cart abandoners. The first is through creating a segment for customers that have added a product to the cart, but haven’t checked out. Then, using Image or HTML Personalization campaigns, you can customize a banner or call-to-action that says something like ‘Welcome back – you've got items in your cart!’ and only appears for people that fall into this segment. You can even offer them a specific coupon to maximize the conversion rate. If your site has a cached cart, you can also have a recommendations box based on items they currently have in their cart, with similar messaging of ‘Before you checkout – add these items!’, reminding the customer they both have items they were intending to buy and that there’s more to see on your store. Using Segmented Experiences, you can prioritize the placement of this box for customers with items in their cart, versus those who do not.
Cart abandonment is about more than just one tactic. Be sure to try email, SMS, exit intent pop ups, and other tactics to get your customers to hit ‘Checkout’.
A beauty brand that partners with influencers could create custom landing pages for shoppers that arrive from each influencer’s content. On that landing page, they could highlight the item the influencer tried, include a snippet of their review, and even highlight a discount code affiliated with that influencer.
Serve customers a unique experience based on what link they clicked on to land on your site.
You can use any URL parameter – such as a UTM or a custom URL – to define an audience segment in LimeSpot. This information can be used to tailor the page your customer lands on, as well as their entire user journey, including how the home page and navigation present themselves.
Set up a segment in LimeSpot based on the URL parameter of your choice. Any customer that arrives on your site from that URL will have a bespoke experience based on rules you set in Image or HTML Personalization campaigns.
Use this strategy to shorten the time to value for customers arriving on your site from marketing activities, including email, paid advertising, social posts, and influencer marketing. If a customer clicks on your ad because they love the item featured in that ad, don’t bury it! Make it the centerpiece of that customer’s experience.
A clothing store could have a featured collection in their mega menu. What collection a customer sees highlighted could vary based on buying behavior between 'Wear to Work', 'Night Out' or 'Weekend Chill', to name just a few segments.
Swap out the featured collections in your main navigation menus based on a customer’s browsing or buying behavior.
Many stores include special collections in their main navigation, either as visual or text-based links. These special collections are often geared toward a specific interest or style, for example, a bike store could have a collection for ‘Mountain Bikers’ while a clothing store could highlight their newest themed drop like ‘Evening in Paris’. Of course, there is only so much room in the navigation to spotlight a few of these featured collections. Using LimeSpot’s HTML Personalization, you can actually swap out these featured collections by customer based on their browsing and buying behavior.
Create audience segments for your customers based on their referral source, browsing, or buying behaviors and / or current-session intent. Use HTML Personalization to edit the navigation and swap out what featured collections appear there based on the segment a customer falls into in real-time.
This strategy works great for evergreen collections that you know you’ll always have items to add to. If you are using it for more seasonal collections, or collections with limited stock, you’ll need to stay on top of whether that collection actually has enough stock once a customer clicks through to it.
A jewelry store that hosts a once-a-year sale could promote different discounts to customers based on their loyalty tier in promotional banners throughout the site. New customers that aren’t yet part of the loyalty program could see banners promoting joining the loyalty program to instantly unlock a smaller discount.
Provide a different experience for customers based on their loyalty program status.
LimeSpot has pre-built integrations with several of the top loyalty and review platforms, including LoyaltyLion, Yotpo, and Smile.io. However, you can also integrate with these platforms through Custom Events. You can use Custom Events to create your own custom segments inside LimeSpot per loyalty plan or review rating. Note that if you’re tailoring the experience to highlight specific price-based promotions, the actual linking between that pricing and loyalty tiers must be handled outside of LimeSpot.
Contact LimeSpot for guidance on how to set up custom events and segments.
The whole point of most loyalty programs is to treat your best customers like VIPs. Segmented Experiences is a fantastic way to nurture your top customers with every visit, while also providing specific experiences to entice less-engaged customers to shop with you more often. Customers are less antagonistic toward promotions or messaging geared toward specific loyalty tiers so take advantage of it by serving them unique experiences! Another option to engage your loyalty program members is to tailor their experience by review rating. Give customers that have rated you 4 or 5 stars a unique experience compared to those that have rated you 3 stars and below.
With so many possibilities, we get it can be hard to figure out where to start. That’s why we’ve created this handy idea guide, to give you plenty of inspiration for all the ways you can use LimeSpot and level up your personalized shopping experience.
Boost your store’s average order values by 10% easily. Set up one-click upsell funnels and post-purchase offers to easily add more items to your shoppers’ carts.
Remove friction from the buyer journey by tailoring your site to each customer's goals.
Segment your customers by their browsing or buying behavior and create a tailored experience throughout their entire buyer journey.
Capture cost-conscious customers more effectively by personalizing your promotional strategy.
Help your emails stand out with 1:1 personalized recommendations or segmented content and images.
Convert more customers and drive more clicks by offering a personalized product recommendation in your SMS outreach.
