What Is Personalization? Tailoring Each Visit

What Changes, and the Data Behind It

Personalization always has two parts: the data you use and what you change, like product picks, a banner, an email or a deal. The data usually comes from three places:

What you already know. Past orders, location or whether someone's on your email list.
What they're doing now. Pages viewed, searches and cart adds during this visit.
Where they came from. An ad, email, search result or social post.

Offer personalization is the narrow slice that only touches the deal: who gets a discount, how big and how long.

One Outdoor Store, Two Home Pages

Example: Say your outdoor store's home page leads with winter jackets. Two people land on it today.

Maya's new. She clicked an ad for trail running shoes and landed on your home page, digging past jackets to find them.
Sam bought a tent last spring and is signed in. He still gets jackets, not sleeping bags to go with that tent.

A personalized page would open with running shoes for Maya and camping gear for Sam. Prices and products don't change, only what each sees first.

Where It Meets Your Conversion Rate

Most visits end without a sale. Across 958 Shopify stores in our visitor data, only 6.72% of product views led to an add to cart. Personalization tries to show each shopper something that fits, sooner. It won't fix a weak product or a high price.

It can misfire, too. A guess from one ad click can easily be wrong: Maya might be buying shoes as a gift and want a jacket for herself. Our smart targeting guide for Shopify personalization covers which signals to act on.

Personalization on a Shopify Store

Shopify has some basic tools built in. Many themes include a product recommendations section showing related items on product pages. In your admin, customer segments group known customers by details like order count or location. You can email a segment or limit a discount to one.

Reacting to what someone does mid-visit usually takes an app. Growth Suite, our app, does it two ways. Its cart drawer suggests products based on what's in the cart, and it shows time-limited offers only to visitors who look less likely to buy.

Myth: A First Name Makes It Personal

"Hi Sam" at the top of an email is personalization in name only. Everyone still gets the same email. Real personalization changes what someone sees: the products, their order, the timing or the offer.

You can overdo it, though. A message that shows you know too much can feel creepy, not helpful.