7 Awesome tricks for Personalized Product Recommendations in B2B eCommerce

When a B2B customer enters your website, you can recommend 'Top Products' that most resonate with their buying interests. Having an AI-powered recommendation engine can help you do this.

You can also show customers revisiting your website - a 'Recently Viewed' carousel that shows them the items in their shopping cart or products that they search for in your website’s search bar or product pages they previously viewed.

The home page is where you can also suggest personalized product recommendations on different categories like what’s on sale, sponsored ads, trending products, bestsellers, and so on.

How does it help?

Essentially, a B2B buying decision involves a larger transaction and the purchase directly affects a specific business outcome. This means the purchase can either be the 'need-of-the-hour' or it could be something that 'is likely to improve the business'.

Adding personalization to a visitor’s home page will make your customer feel confident that they will find what they’re looking for and also have a great shopping experience on your eCommerce platform.

Based on your B2B buyer’s browsing history and previous purchase, personalized search engines suggest the best products in the category looked for. It is also very useful in targeting 'long tail' product sales.

How does it help?

A personalized search recommendation will be effective since the customer is looking for a specific item and is likely to make a purchase.

The results page is also a great place to recommend 'new products' or show a 'custom product display' that shows items specific to the demographics, locations, gender, and age of the buyer.

Consider two different B2B buyers looking for office lighting. A buyer from the United States will only see suggestions that meet the minimum standard set for office lighting by the US government. But a buyer from the UK would see different office lighting suggestions.

Adding 'best sellers' having the highest customer ratings and reviews for the same search category will also work wonders here.

How does it help?

Curated search results create a positive buying experience keeping your customers engaged and coming back for more.

Promote upsells and cross-sell on your B2B eCommerce store with 'Related items' and 'Trending items' in the category.

You can also use collaborative filtering like 'Customers Who Bought / Viewed This…' which was first introduced by Amazon. It shows your customers what most buyers bought or viewed after viewing the current product.

How does it help?

Showing your customers related products is a great way to boost sales via the cross-selling technique.

When your customer is on the cart page, you can show similar products that can be purchased together with the 'Frequently bought together' engine.

You can also recommend products that are like or even better than the products in the cart by using 'Related items', 'Latest products' or 'Bestsellers' to the cart page.

How does it help?

This kind of recommendation will be effective since the customer is willing to purchase and is likely to accept your suggestion.

This is where you create a lasting impression on your customer. Now that your customer is almost making a payment, make them feel appreciated with a reward.

Reward programs often increase return visitors and can also increase sales. You can do so by giving away discount coupons, transaction-based discounts, referral rewards, or providing free shipping for items worth more than a specific amount in the cart.

Imagine this:

Consider a scenario where you offer a flat 25% discount to customers who have shopped for $1000 dollars and above.

A customer with a cart value of $750 dollars for office supplies is more likely to add items worth $250 for items in the same category.

You can use personalized product recommendation engines like 'Items also purchased…' to display office supplies priced around $250 for your customer to make that last move towards the reward.

How does it help?

Not only will your customer remember a happy purchase (read it as a discount purchase) on your eCommerce site but may also add last-minute items and increase their cart value to claim a reward. This increases both customer engagement and sales.

Losing customers sounds disheartening, but the truth is, not everyone buys on the first go. Most B2B visitors gather a lot of information before making a purchase, as they may have to report costs and be able to justify them to their seniors and team members.

This is where a good content marketing strategy can really help them.

After evaluating different scenarios where a B2B buyer is more likely to convert, would you then recommend the same products and the same content copies to both personas? Definitely not!

Consider sending automated, but highly personalized emails with compelling subject lines to remind your customer that they’ve left something in their cart.

You can add personalized product recommendations like 'Trending Products' that are highly relevant to buyers in similar industries and also team it up with limited period offers to create urgency.

How does it help?

Highly relevant product recommendations with compelling content can help you retain your customers. You can also add a blog link to your email that talks about that product or add real product reviews from customers.

This will help build trust in the product and also give your buyers the confidence they need to make that B2B purchase decision.