Product Recommendation for Online Shopping - What Does It Look Like?

Are you wondering what good product recommendations should look like on the website of an online store? The answer is simple —  banners with suggestions to buy further products should be both unnoticeable and visible. Is it not mutually exclusive? Is such a solution even possible?

In this article, you will learn:

• What the Recostream recommendations look like.
• How to personalize the appearance of recommendation banners.
• What are the best locations for each type of product recommendations.
• What are the benefits of personalizing the appearance of tools in online stores.

How does recommendations in an online store should look like?

Many online store administrators treat additional tools, applications or plug-ins with caution. They are concerned about disturbing the visual aspect and consistency of the store.

A neat design of the website is the foundation that helps us can make a good impression on online customers and make the store navigation easier. In other words,  we aim to create a good shopping experience and make the customer's decision making process easier.

What is more, properly designed online recommendation mechanism increases customers' decision satisfaction, attitudes toward recommended products, and positive purchase intentions, and actual purchases. 

How to personalize the appearance of recommendation banners

Add-ons such as a banner with recommendations or a pop-up shopping assistant are solutions that interfere with the appearance of the website. Sometimes it simply spoils the look of an eCommerce store.

It doesn't always need to be this way! A minimalist, website-style recommendation banner can be treated as a new, essential piece of the puzzle. A puzzle that will further simplify navigation through your online store.

This element, i.e., a banner with sets of personalized recommendations, is an extension of a modern online store whose customized appearance is always consistent with an ecommerce site.

When choosing a tool, have in mind that personalization of the recommendation windows is easy and accessible even for people who do not deal with web design.

The free choice of font type and color, size of product photos, and the appropriate banner shape is a must feature of your future personalization tool.

Using Recostream you can also decide about product recommendations's name. Instead of putting "Recommended Product" you can introduce e.g., "Suggested products", "You May Also Like", "Chosen only for you". Create a unique style!

A great example of product recommendation banners:

Customer online shopping decisions are easier with recommendation systems

Machine learning technology generates a personalized selection of recommended products basing purchase history, user preferences and item specifications.

The set of displayed products is unique and influences consumer decisions. The probability that a given user will add the product to a shopping cart and continue the purchase process is much higher.

How exactly the recommendations are displayed to a given user? How does product recommendation system work?

The online recommendation mechanism is based on both collaborative filtering method and content-based mathod.

1. Collaborative filtering approach — the AI-based system analyzes data obtained from website visitors who bought similar products. Then it uses similarities between users and items to provide product recommendations.

   

2. Content-based filtering approach - first the system collects and analyzes the webisite visitors' preferences (it uses  cookies to track visits). Then, in order to generate product recommendations, it uses data from the detailed item description and recommend other items similar to what the user likes, based on their previous actions or explicit feedback.

Online shopping experience powered with an online recommendation mechanism is more pleasant for website visitors. The tool also recovers abandoned shopping carts, generates more traffic, and boosts the average order value.

To learn more about product recommendations' benefits and effective tool applications, read one of our case studies. We present there how product recommendations influenced the sales and conversion rates.

Locations of product recommendation in online stores + visual examples

Another important issue is the possibility to place recommendations anywhere during the customer journey without the help of programmers.

Why is it significant? The results of the implementations analysis show that the locations of product recommendations that boost sales are the following (in order from the most effective):

Product page

The most powerful location for product recommendations. Placing a recommendation banner below the main product will impact on customer online shopping decisions. The best product recommendation examples are: Similar Products, Other Customers Also Purchased, Frequently Bought Together, Recently Visited In Store.

Category page

One of the first subpages new and existing customers will open right after the main page, is the category page. Increase conversions by displaying: Bestsellers in Category, Recently Visited in Store, Other Customers Also Purchased.

Pop-up after adding a product to the shopping basket

We recommend choosing the cross-selling recommendation model here. It will most likely suggest adding complementary products to the shopping cart. To show your consumers relevant products, consider these product recommendation examples: You May Also Like, Other Customers Also Purchased, Bestsellers, Frequently Bought Together.

Store Home Page

This is where the "Recently Viewed" model for returnees and the "Popular" model, which features the best-selling products in your store, will work great.

Pop-up on the page of an unavailable product

The recommendation system helps to redirect the traffic from an unavailable product to other pages of the store with available products. The pop-up displays similar items to the unavailable one and the most popular items in the store (models: Bestsellers in Category, Similar Products).

Cart page

In case of recommendations on the online shopping cart, it is worth choosing Rule-Driven Recommendations model and set manually set of complementary products or products on sales. In this way you can provide advice in finding suitable products, and facilitate the online consumer decision making process. It also reduces cart abandonment rate, and increase conversions by building a fast checkout process.

Blog post

Thanks to content-based filtering method set of personalized product recommendations will appear on your online store's blog. The system adapt suggested items to the context and display the products that are mentioned in a given article.

Would you like to know more application examples? Click on the link to read the  Case Study of the implementation of the recommendation engine in a women's clothing store

Benefits of personalized product recommendation banners

You already know what does product recommendations look like in online stores. Now it's time to learn more about benefits of the tool for both online sellers and online shoppers.

First, new online product recommendation mechanisms are becoming more and more available in online stores to assist consumers with reducing information overload, provide advice in finding relevant products, and facilitate online consumer decision-making.

What is more, recommend products convert new visitors into first-time buyers and existing customers into repeat buyers. That's an easy way to build your customer loyalty.

Also, by suggesting products you can recover abandoning visitors who are leaving your site before checking out. 

Product recommendation system improves consumers satisfaction by adapting shopping experiences to meet online consumer expectations.

Recommending products to your online store customers throughout their customer journey is a great way to increase sales by 5-10%. Check our Case Study where we show statistics of our implementations.

Recommendation for online shopping - summary

New extensions on online stores do not have to be persistent, intrusive and disrupting the aesthetics of the online store's website.  Properly designed and located banners with recommendations increase the conversion rates and contribute to higher sales and increased trust of online stores users. By choosing a product recommendation system, you can be sure that its installation will not be complicated, and its appearance will match the style of your online stores.