Shopping experiences that feel tailored and informed can build lasting impressions that quickly turn into repeat purchases, both in-store and online. Having the tools to personalize every visit and cross-sell similar products gives you the opportunity to differentiate and keep customers coming back. Effective cross-selling techniques can improve revenue per customer by 65% or more, and 80% of buyers prefer to buy from brands that personalize the purchase experience.
But offering those seamless, personalized experiences is often easier said than done. The ability to personalize and cross-sell often requires that your store staff recognizes every customer, remembers their purchase history, and has a deep knowledge of your entire inventory. While this may work for those who have been with you longest, new staff members or seasonal staff members could also benefit from the tools to start selling effectively right away. And even your most seasoned staff would have no way of making recommendations based on what your customers are buying online.
For a business that operates both in-store and online, you’re missing out on key cross-sell and upsell opportunities by not leveraging your online buyer insights to optimize and personalize in-store selling. Product recommendations for POS enable you to do just that and more.
Introducing: Product recommendations for POS
Product recommendations for POS create a bridge between your in-store and website sales for more informed and effective selling. Data-backed, just-in-time product recommendations on the POS home screen, individual product pages, and customer profiles create cross-sell and upsell opportunities that make it easy for staff to personalize buyer experiences and make smarter recommendations that are guaranteed to increase cart sizes and sales, wherever your customers choose to shop.
Product recommendations for POS are automatically created by:
- Analyzing purchases made or items added to the cart to surface items that are frequently bought together (included in the Pro subscription of the all-new Shopify POS)
- Looking at an individual customer’s past purchase history to recommend similar items, complementary items, or the same items in new colours or materials (available through select Shopify app partners as POS embedded apps)
The Pro subscription of the all-new Shopify POS comes with built-in product recommendations that can be accessed by adding a tile to your home screen or through the cart settings when processing a sale. The all-new Shopify POS also integrates with third party apps, which provide more advanced options for product recommendations, and are explored in further detail below.
Leverage online insights to drive consistency, confidence, and conversion in your in-person selling
Treat customers like “regulars”, everywhere they shop
Product recommendations for POS enable you to offer customers a consistent level of personalized service, regardless of which location they choose to shop. When customers shop online, a customer profile is created automatically on the point of sales software, where staff at any location can look to see product recommendations based on the customer’s online and in-store purchase history, increasing your chances of making a sale the first time a customer walks into your store.
Get a leg up over your competition and build trust by developing a reputation among your customers as a brand that has a deep knowledge of their needs and preferences by treating your customer as one customer, no matter where they choose to do business with you.
Give new team members the inside scoop
Years of experience is an unfair advantage in retail. It can be intimidating for new staff members to know where to begin when it comes to building relationships with your customers. There’s a level of trust that your staff have to establish with customers before they can start cross-selling and upselling, and staff who have worked at your store for years have a clear head start. With personalized product recommendations at their fingertips, all staff will have the confidence to build stronger relationships with your customers. By demonstrating an understanding of their needs and recommending relevant products from the start of the relationship, staff will quickly become experts in the minds of your customers, enabling them to do even more with product and cart-level recommendations by taking advantage of every cross-sell and upsell opportunity they spot.
Get trainees to the sales floor faster
Just-in-time product recommendations at the cart level and the product level make it easy for new staff members to learn on the job and start cross-selling and upselling with confidence from day one, long before they’ve learned the entire inventory of your store.
Convert more customers and increase cart size by making recommendations based on products they’ve expressed interest in, products they’ve already purchased, or products similar customers have purchased.
Getting started with product recommendations for POS
1. Make sure you’re using the all-new POS
In order to set up product recommendations for POS, you need to be using the all-new Shopify POS. With the Pro subscription, designed for brick and mortar stores, you can access product recommendations by adding a Product recommendations tile to your home screen, or through the cart settings when processing a sale.
2. Choose an app partner
More advanced product recommendations are also available as POS embedded apps through select Shopify app partners. Currently, there are 4 apps you can choose from to access personalized product recommendations for your store.
Marsello by Marsello
Using Marsello, your staff can see and access product recommendations to suit your customers’ needs in key areas of Shopify POS in the form of a smart tile.
When your staff are building a cart on the home screen or looking at a specific product page, Marsello looks at the items in question and instantly offers recommendations based on what other customers with similar profiles have frequently bought together with these products online and offline. Your staff can leverage these data-backed recommendations to cross-sell and upsell products to your customers that have the highest likelihood of turning into sales.
Marsello also enables your staff to offer personalized product recommendations to your customers based on their past purchase history by surfacing recommendations on every customer’s profile.
Delight your customers by showing them products at your store that will complement items they may have bought at another location or online.
InstantSearch+ by Fast Simon
InstantSearch+ provides your store staff with smart product recommendations on the POS home screen, individual product pages, and on customers’ profiles. In addition to considering a customer’s online shopping data to suggest products that are frequently bought together, InstantSearch+ is able to analyze text and product data from your inventory to provide powerful tools for clothing stores that can recommend similar styles to what customers have expressed interest in in the past, and suggest options for completing partial looks.
Similar Styles and Complete-The-Look suggestions can be surfaced on the home screen when building a cart, or individual product pages. They enable new and seasonal staff members to become instant and indispensable stylists for your customers with hardly any training by helping to ensure that they are always prepared to help customers find “the same style in a different material” or cross-sell items for the best look - without any previous fashion training or any knowledge of the new collection.
Frequently Bought Together and Also Bought by Code Black Belt
Frequently Bought Together takes the guesswork out of product bundling and enables your staff to help first-time shoppers make informed purchases by analyzing items in the cart or on an individual product page, and recommending items that are frequently bought together as a bundle. Recommendations are based on past orders online and offline.
Also Bought leverages data from over 500 million orders and 40 million products to produce product recommendations that are guaranteed to increase your cart sizes. New and seasoned staff will benefit from instant insight into products that other customers bought together in the same situation to make recommendations that sell.
3. Add your app to POS
If accessing product recommendations through an app, you can add your app to POS to access product recommendations on your smart grid, product page, and customer page.
Start offering personalized shopping experiences
Product recommendations for POS is a powerful tool, regardless of whether it’s in the hands of your most seasoned staff members or your newest seasonal staff. It bridges the gap between online and offline selling in a way that enables you to create consistently valuable shopping experiences for your customers, all while arming your staff with the insights and confidence to take advantage of all cross-sell and upsell opportunities, converting browsers into buyers.