Sunday 1st June 2025
Personalisation has become one of the most potent tools in ecommerce, promising better customer experiences, higher conversions, and stronger brand loyalty. But in the race to integrate AI tools and automation platforms, many brands skip the most critical first step: understanding people.
Before you introduce advanced algorithms or dynamic content engines, you must first establish a human-led personalisation strategy. This means thinking deeply about your customers, their needs, and how you can tailor your experience to them in meaningful, respectful ways.
This article explores the essential building blocks of effective ecommerce personalisation without relying on artificial intelligence. These are techniques your team can think through, map out, and implement manually—laying the strategic foundation that AI can later enhance.
These insights help you identify friction points and motivations that quantitative data alone might not reveal. A user complaining that your product page doesn’t show sizing in context, or that checkout flow feels confusing, is handing you gold. Rather than starting with what you can personalize, begin with what your customers want you to understand.
I recommend creating personas based on behavior and motivation, not just age or gender. A good starting point is the Jobs To Be Done framework. For example:
When you understand the functional and emotional jobs your personas are trying to accomplish, you can more meaningfully align content, CTAs, and user journeys. Empathy helps you focus not just on selling, but on helping. It turns an ecommerce experience from transactional to relational.
Manual segmentation works best when it's rooted in relevance. For instance, if you know that a segment of users consistently buys eco-friendly products, you can spotlight sustainable options across your site and email content. Segmentation also helps avoid blanket marketing tactics that feel out of sync with a customer’s real needs. The key is to choose 2–4 useful segments that are both meaningful and manageable with your current tools.
A customer’s relationship with your brand evolves over time. Lifecycle messaging acknowledges that relationship and delivers value appropriate to each stage. For example, your welcome email should reassure new customers, offer help, and establish your tone—not pitch your most expensive product. Similarly, your re-engagement campaigns might include helpful reminders or showcase new benefits to win back attention, instead of generic discount blasts. Think of lifecycle messaging as a conversation, not a sales script.
Where your visitors come from tells you a lot about their mindset and expectations. Someone arriving from a blog post may be in a learning mode, while someone coming via branded search may be ready to buy. By aligning landing page content with the intent of the traffic source, you make the experience feel more intuitive and relevant.
Over-personalisation can feel invasive or just annoying. Ask yourself:
Trust is the currency of digital commerce, and heavy-handed personalization can damage it. It’s important to build guardrails around what data you use and how. Consider offering users control, such as letting them set preferences or opt into experiences. Subtle touches—like remembering sizing preferences or content categories—can be more meaningful than flashy, overly familiar gimmicks.
| Tool | Purpose | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Google Optimize | A/B testing and simple page personalization | Free, integrates with Google Analytics |
| Hotjar | Heatmaps and session recordings | Understand real user behavior |
| Klaviyo | Email segmentation and automation | Great for ecommerce use cases |
| ConvertFlow | Personalized calls-to-action | Tailor messages to user segments |
| Webflow | Custom landing pages | Build pages without code |
Many successful ecommerce strategies still rely on intuition, gut feel, and testing. Some examples:
Human intuition also helps contextualize data. Maybe analytics show a high bounce rate on a product page, but it takes a human to connect the dots between slow-loading images and a frustrated mobile experience. By empowering your team to speak up and hypothesise, you foster a culture of curiosity and problem-solving.
Eventually, AI can help you scale and automate your personalization efforts. It can predict intent, automate recommendations, and even write tailored content.
But AI is only as good as the strategy you feed it. The most effective ecommerce personalization starts with:
Take a whiteboard (or a digital canvas) and map out:
Then choose one simple tool—like Klaviyo or Hotjar—and begin testing. You don’t need to be a data scientist to get started. You just need to think like your customer.