Using Real-Time Feedback to Personalize the Shopping Experience in a New Way

It's widely known that customer reviews can boost trust and credibility, as well as drive significant improvements to conversion rates and search rankings. Just as well known is the challenge of actually getting customers to provide feedback and reviews. Feedback is often difficult to come by and, in most cases, isn't representative of a retailer’s entire customer base. Here are some of the current challenges retailers face in gathering feedback, as well as insight into the direction customer feedback is heading in 2012.

Current Customer Feedback Roadblocks
Challenges continue to arise as the online shopping habits of consumers evolve. For example, a consumer may have “Liked” a product on Facebook but didn't buy it. They may have clicked on the product because it's visually appealing but didn't intend on purchasing it. Analytics and final sales often don't show the whole story of how a consumer feels about a product.

Long or cumbersome rating and review processes leave out a vast amount of customer data that's vital to merchandising and presenting product recommendations. But what if reviews only took one click and actually helped shape the customer’s experience in real time?

Enter Pandora-Style Recommendations
In June, iGoDigital developed a new product recommendation feature called “Own It/Love It/Hate It,” which harnesses the popularity of Pandora, the free internet radio provider which delivers songs to listeners based on their identified music tastes. The Own It/Love It/Hate It feature allows customers to voice their opinion of a product with just one click.

With tools like this, customers can give feedback with a simple thumbs up or thumbs down, giving retailers direct and immediate feedback without a huge time commitment on the customer's end. While traditional reviews are more time intensive, Own It/Love It/Hate It is a simple process that yields feedback from people who might never leave a review. This feedback ultimately enables retailers to enhance the customer experience and make product recommendations even more effective.

Tools like this also greatly benefit a retailer’s customers as they can receive more refined recommendations while shopping, especially regarding products they may already own. With Own It/Love It/Hate It, recommendations based on products can now also be entered into equation. For example, shaver heads may be removed from the recommendation scenario if a person indicates he already owns a particular model. However, a women’s apparel retailer might want to refine the tool so that if a women indicates she owns a particular shoe, that shoe is recommended to her in different colors during her shopping experience (research indicates women often buy the same shoe in different colors).

While Own It/Love It/Hate It is only one example of how retailers are addressing the customer feedback challenge, it demonstrates how brands are starting to leverage data outside of sales or reviews to influence recommendations. Retailers continue to realize they must be there in real time to present relevant and personalized recommendations to each shopper in order to increase conversion rates, average order value and revenue — regardless of the medium. With access to even more customer data, retailers can leverage new recommendation scenarios, ultimately taking personalization solutions one step further.

Eric Tobias is founder and president of iGoDigital, a provider of personalization and product recommendation services. Eric can be reached at tellmemore@igodigital.com.