If you’ve ever been shopping online, you may have noticed a section on every website that offers you recommendations based on what you’ve previously purchased. Some websites implement recommendations similar to what you’ve purchased whereas some websites base it off of what you’ve searched for.
Either way, these recommendation systems tend to be rather accurate to the wants and desires of the consumer. But what exactly is a recommendation system and how does it work? In the simplest of terms, a recommendation system takes the information of your previous searches and purchases and offers you items based on your history. These items will be within a recommended price range that seems to match your budget.
Many people consumers seem to have holdups about systems that record their information and use it for marketing purposes, and rightfully so! However, some websites have begun to ask for permission first, and most of the systems make shopping easier for the consumer. Some recommendation systems might seem invasive, but there are many benefits of recommendation systems.
Benefits of a recommendation system
A quality recommendation system offers benefits to everyone involved – owners of the products, developers of the website, and consumers who are shopping. Recommendation systems simplify the shopping experience for the consumer while drawing more online traffic for the websites that use it.
For the developer: The whole purpose of a recommendation system is to showcase what your website has to offer. In a sense, this is a subtle form of advertisement that is specifically tailored towards what your consumers want to see. By showing the recommended items, you give them the idea that you have plenty of items that match what they’re looking for. These recommendations draw your customers back to your website when they wish to browse for more items similar to their interests.
For the consumer: Shopping online can be an overwhelming experience – anything you’ve ever wanted is available to you at the click of a mouse. It’s easy to get lost in the rabbit hole of online stuff. Having a system that recommends to you items that you might like based on what you’ve previously purchased helps to simplify this process. It puts your likes and wants into one place and provides you direct access to the items you might desire without having to search for them. Best of all, it’s tailored to you.
Cost guesser
Many recommendation systems will feature a cost range for the items recommended. This provides a further benefit to the consumer base as it doesn’t offer them items that are so beyond their price range that they won’t come back. Having a certain price range in the recommendation section of your website will make your consumer base more likely to continue shopping through your site.
The cost guesser takes information from the items a customer has purchased as well as the items they’ve shopped for and offers a maximum recommended price based on this data. By seeing what a customer is willing to pay on certain items, the recommendation system is enabled to offer items similar in price for them to see. The more tailored to your consumer base the system is, the more likely they are to come back and shop with you!
