The success of failure of many of today’s online customer experiences are largely based on how personalized they are to their customer’s needs. As product recommendations, geo-targeted offers, relevant content and so much more all contribute to the all important personalized customer experience, it’s now up to the retailers to meet these demands head on. Yet, as much of today’s research shows, that’s easier said than done.

As many struggle to understand what customers want, what a successfully personalized experience really looks like, or how to implement it, dozens of surveys and studies are being published with important information retailers can leverage to create and improve their personalization strategy.

We’ve collected just a few of the most recent and interesting statistics to give today’s retailers a snapshot at how they’re doing when it comes to personalization, and what their customers are looking for in a personalized experience:

  1. Smart personalization engines used to recognize customer intent will enable digital businesses to increase their profits by up to 15% (Source: Gartner, 2016)
  2. 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from a retailer that recognizes them by name, recommends options based on past purchases, OR knows their purchase history (Source: Accenture, 2016)
  3. 81% of consumers want brands to get to know them and understand when to approach them and when not to (Source: Accenture, 2017)
  4. 74% of customers feel frustrated when website content is not personalized (Source: Infosys, 2016)
  5. 79 percent of organizations that exceeded revenue goals have a documented personalization strategy, compared to 31 percent of those that met revenue goals and 8 percent of those that missed revenue goals (Source: Monetate, 2017)
  6. 68% of marketers struggle to achieve a real-time view of their customers (Source: Monetate, 2017)
  7. 83% of marketers say creating personalized content is their biggest challenge (Source: Rapt Media, 2016)
  8. Personalized home page promotions influenced 85% of consumers to buy while personalized shopping cart recommendations influenced 92% of shoppers online (Source: Kibo, 2017)
  9. Over 78% of consumers will only engage offers if they have been personalized to their previous engagements with the brand (Source: Marketo, 2016)
  10. 98% of consumers have been dissuaded from completing a purchase because of incomplete or incorrect content, with 32% of consumers being dissuaded every time (Source: Episerver, 2017)

While there is no perfect recipe for personalization, it’s clear that understanding the customer and creating a user flow that eases frustrations and provides value are important aspects that customers will appreciate.