When it comes to e-commerce, the success of any business lies in providing customers with an experience they can’t resist. One of the ways to achieve this is through product customization. Product customization allows customers to tailor items to meet their needs and preferences.
In this article, we’ll be discussing Product Customization in Magento E-commerce, specifically the difference between UX customization and personalization, examples of each, benefits, Magento’s effectiveness in product customization, and best practices to follow.
Product Customization vs. Personalisation for Better UX
Personalization and Customization are integral to enhancing the customer experience and ensuring a seamless and captivating purchase journey. These strategies are employed to tailor and refine every interaction with the customer, creating a bespoke and delightful encounter.
Customization, by definition, entails engaging clients in the creation of products and adjusting them to meet individual needs. It empowers customers to craft tailored products and services that align with their preferences, setting them apart from others.
Personalization is founded on client data to foster bespoke communication between customers and stores. It encompasses tailored messages, personalized searches, and recommendations driven by past customer behavior. This approach involves segmentation and meticulous client data processing.
For a better understanding of e-commerce, and personalization have a look at our other Blog article on Magento personalization features.
Examples of Customization and Personalization
Customers can experience customization by tailoring products to their desired size, color, design, or material. Moreover, personalization solutions encompass recommender systems for showcasing related products based on previous purchases or views, targeted emails, and product recommendations right on the homepage.
Custom products refer to the act of configuring personalized products and services. For instance, this can include allowing the client to make decisions regarding specific own product details such as having their name printed on a t-shirt or mug. This level of personalization adds a unique touch to the customer’s experience, making it more memorable and tailored to their preferences.
Image source: Nutella FB Fanpage
Here is a Nutella customization example. With a specialized customization service, customers have the opportunity to personalize their jars by adding their names to the label. This simple yet impactful option transforms each jar into a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, making it a truly unique and memorable product.
Combining Customization and Personalization to improve UX
When you combine the powerful elements of customization and personalization, you create a highly tailored and completely personalized user experience. By providing customers with relevant and curated product recommendations that align with their preferences, as well as empowering them to customize their products according to their unique needs and desires, you can significantly enhance customer engagement, and satisfaction, and ultimately drive more conversions with repeat purchases.
This level of attention to detail fosters deeper connections and fosters a sense of ownership, making their entire journey with your brand truly exceptional.
Customization Benefits for an Online Store
Offering product customization comes with immense benefits. It leads to increased customer loyalty, better brand recognition, reduced returns, and increased market revenue. Customers will have a sense of ownership of the product they customize, leading to stronger brand loyalty.
Customization in e-commerce is all about providing customers with a range of options to tailor a product to their preferences, ensuring a truly personalized experience. Research from Deloitte (1) indicates that 1 in 3 consumers who desire customization feel that standard products fall short of their expectations. This underscores the undeniable need for customization in the e-commerce industry.
The main business benefits of customized products are as follows:
- custom product designing is fun for clients and engages them for a longer time-on-site, supporting SEO and website performance,
- increased basket value as customers are willing to pay more for customized products,
- increased sales being excellent gift choices,
- personal relations as custom products are unique and able to express personality, as well as distinguish from others,
- brand loyalty, personal and relationship-based connection with customers,
- increasing NPS score as satisfied clients are more willing to recommend your store and brand,
- lowering returns by 40% as purchase decisions are more informed and adjusted to the client.
Best Practices in Product Customisations
To achieve the desired goals of product customization, there are several best practices to follow by a company. Firstly, make it clear to the customer which parts of the product they could customize. Provide high-quality product images that reflect the customization choices. Secondly, ensure that the customization process is simple and easy to understand. Thirdly, limit the number of customization options and keep it concise.
- Clear communication on-site in the customization areas improves customer experience.
- High-quality product images and 3D pictures of customizable products enable customers to make informed purchasing decisions.
- The smooth customer journey from customization to the shopping cart.
How to handle Product Customization in a Magento store?
Magento, one of the leading e-commerce platforms, offers several features that facilitate product customization. It provides templates that allow businesses to create customization forms for customers with slight effort.
Magento also allows for easy integration of product configurators and extensions that enable personalization functionalities. You can use an existing Magento extension or build your own from scratch. Building customization features for Magento is highly effective due to its open code, which allows for seamless and hassle-free customization.
Custom product designer
Magento provides two distinct methods for configuring products: configurable products and custom product options. Configurable products allow for the creation of variations with specific attributes such as size, color, or material.
On the other hand, custom product options enable the addition of personalized choices or additional features to a product. These versatile features empower businesses to cater to diverse customer preferences and create a seamless shopping experience.
Configurable Products
When it comes to items with different options like color, material, or components, configurable products are the way to go. They give customers the power to choose the perfect combination for them before making a purchase. For instance, you can select the color or design of your skis from a variety of preset options. Make your purchase truly yours with custom product designs.
Custom products options
Custom product options allow you to provide a range of choices and extra services associated with a specific product. These options can include personalization, add-ons, or gift wrapping. For instance, by offering custom product options, you offer customers the ability to personalize a particular item by adding customized text or images to support making the final product truly unique.
Magento products customization examples
Below we present a collection of unique examples showcasing various product adaptation features. These features include customizability options, user-centric design elements, and adaptability to diverse market segments.
By incorporating these powerful features, companies can effectively cater to the specific needs and preferences of their target audience, ensuring maximum customer satisfaction and more sales.
Configurable products with API solution for online store
Configurable products are troublemakers for eCommerce platforms as all the variables usually generate thousands of individual products that need to be managed by the eCommerce platform.
No matter how advanced it is, and able to handle the situation, it tends to create a complicated workflow. As all products need further maintenance when it comes to changes in dimensions, fabrics, and prices.
MAGENTO ECOMMERCE STORE SITUATION
The smart blinds are highly configurable products with multiple variations. It makes them attractive for clients who compose a smart home with IoT technology. Each blind can be produced for an individual window dimension. No matter if it’s a modern large-scale window or a small roof one. With tailored blinds, you can cover all of them with similar fabrics.
We decided to implement a maximum simplifying solution. Thanks to taking a larger perspective we recognized that the producer can automatically deliver product data and materials from its system and we can transfer it directly to e-commerce with no burden.
So the ordering process and purchasing are handled directly from the producer instance. The e-commerce platform is taking a broker role with almost no maintenance needs.
The solution here was an API connection. It was a game-changer. Thanks to this technology the eCommerce platform can easily handle the ordering and purchasing without managing almost 4 000 product variations. This Magento product configurator is based on data from external instances making the process easier to manage.
Read the Smart Blinds Configurator case study to discover more business values in this product customizer solution.
This article highlights the importance of API integration and how it can streamline and optimize eCommerce processes. You’ll also learn more about how to set up a configurator for your own Magento store.
All in all, this API connection demonstrated great success in the development of connected experiences that not only make user interaction easier but also improve back-end efficiency.
Moodboard in Magento store
Moodboard is a product customization tool that enables customers to create a personalized customer journey. It allows you to visualize furniture and decorations, providing a perfect means to see how items will fit into your room using real-life pictures.
With Moodboard, there’s no need to rely on imagination or traditional brick-and-mortar stores anymore. Clients can combine pictures of their own homes with the products they plan to purchase, enhancing their user experience and facilitating informed decisions.
Our goal was not just to simplify the process of designing with accessible products and product series, but also to enable the saving of mood boards and easy movement of products to the shopping cart. By offering available products and product series, we have made interior design easier, while also streamlining the customer journey through the ability to save and transfer products seamlessly.
The user is engaged in designing the individual space with several options:
- background changing using real photos of their home or various colors,
- color range definition,
- adding products and product series,
- adding texts,
- sharing and saving pictures as print-ready files or a shopping list,
- adding to the cart.
The engaging process of design helps to create the look and feel of the chosen products and make the purchasing decision more informed. Additionally, customers can save designs to their accounts and review them later, or share them with family, friends, or interior designers.
More about Moodboard feature for Magento e-commerce please have a look at the blog article.
3D Augmented Reality for the furniture industry
This is another way to deliver a truly personalized shopping experience. It combines desktop and mobile devices giving extensive and complete control over the customer journey to the user. It enables customers to view furniture in their environment, bringing a whole new level of personalization and perceived value to the shopping process.
With Augmented Reality (AR) we are able to give the customers an accurate and immersive experience – allowing them to truly see how the furniture will fit with their existing space before making any purchase decisions. By using 3D AR technology, users can move around and explore different options, allowing them to experience the product in their own environment.
3D AR for the furniture industry step by step
The initial step in this process is to generate high-quality rendered images of the products and seamlessly embed them onto the website. As an added feature, a unique QR code is generated, which serves as a conduit for transferring the rendered product images onto the real-life space of the client’s apartment, allowing them to visualize the end result directly on their mobile device. This innovative approach combines cutting-edge technology with user-friendly interaction, enhancing the overall experience for clients.
How it works for the client
Step 1. Chose the product you want to visualize in your place and click View in 3D button.
Step 2. Scan the QR code on your mobile device.
Step 3. Check the product in your place.
This technology opens up a wide range of possibilities, such as being able to compare similar products along with enabling customers to share their experiences and recommendations among friends and family. Furthermore, it will help retailers understand customer behavior when it comes to personalized offers on a deeper level which can be used for marketing strategies.
Conclusion
Product customization and personalization present businesses with opportunities to provide a unique e-commerce experience. Consumers crave a sense of ownership, and this is where product customization comes to play.
By combining UX Customisation and Personalisation, businesses can provide a tailored and personalized user experience. Magento offers solutions and tools for product customization, making the process work seamlessly. With these tips in mind, you can steer your business towards new heights of success in e-commerce. If you have any questions, feel free to ask LET’S TALK whenever you wish!
Resources:
(1)Â https://www2.deloitte.com/ch/en/pages/consumer-business/articles/made-to-order-the-rise-of-mass-personalisation.html
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