Personalisation in ecommerce: a beginner’s guide

This overview of personalisation in ecommerce is an excerpt from Econsultancy’s Ecommerce Best Practice Guide.
Ecommerce personalisation means giving customers an individualised online experience based on their demographics, persona, previous purchases, interests, search and buying behaviour.
The notion of personalisation is compelling: each visitor to an ecommerce site is treated like a unique individual with tailored content, products and propositions. Examples of personalisation include:
Contents of this briefing:

Communications based on user behaviour (such as abandoning a basket)
Landing pages with offers based on personalised information (such as a birthday)
Personalised on-site notifications and recommendations based on previous behaviour (such as previous purchases)
Recommendations based on similar user behaviour
Personalisation based on real-time data (such as location or time)
Digital advertising with personalised visuals and pricing.

The idea of personalisation is to provide a richer ecommerce experience by serving the right message on the right channel at the right time.
Evidence points to the role of personalisation in boosting sales, conversation rates, repurchase rates, cross-sell and improving customer relationship metrics such as loyalty and retention.