The biggest shift in buyer behavior leading up to the holiday shopping season is the transition to shopping for other people. Think about it: consumers might still visit their go-to retailers and favorite shops, but their behaviors and preferences will look completely different.

What this means: retailers must ensure that the search and product discovery experiences in their owned environments are flexible. The system needs to interpret those shifts as a temporary change in preferences – and quickly adjust content and recommendations accordingly.

Commerce Search and Product Discovery solutions often build affinity scores for shoppers. These scores measure the perceived preferences that the shopper has for certain types of products, brands, or features. Consumers’ shift toward shopping for others instead of themselves can create two issues – one instant and one lasting:

  1. Incorrect assumptions about what they want right now.

I shop for my own gender, size, favorite colors, style, and other preferences. Retail websites – especially those that I frequent – probably know those preferences well. Despite the value in leveraging that data to provide more relevant experiences to me year-round, during holiday shopping that data also will certainly show me the wrong products – since I’m more likely than usual not shopping for me.

  1. Skewing of data that will make future (non-holiday) shopping sessions less relevant.

To make matters worse, if the search solution doesn’t understand that this is a temporary shift, it may update and override previous data based on my holiday shopping activities. My preferences that it knew so well will be muddied by the shopping I did for my family, leading to a mix of content and recommendations that no longer suit me in the new year.

Work with Commerce Search vendors to enable flexibility through seasonal changes

To avoid both short and long term issues that will lead to poor experiences for your customers, work with vendors to ensure:

  1. Algorithms are trained to recognize behavior changes and adjust accordingly.
  2. In-session behavior weighs more heavily than historical behavior, especially during holiday shopping periods.
  3. Historical behavior remains and is not replaced by in-session anomalous behaviors, especially after holiday shopping periods.
  4. Automated testing continually adjusts so that the system still respects measured affinities, while also adapting for the shopper’s needs of the moment.

What other tactics can merchants use during the holiday shopping season? 

To help your busy customers, you’ll want to:

  • Manage your featured products, digital merchandising, and promotions to focus on gift-worthy items.
  • Create dynamic categories that will automatically display low-cost items (call them “stocking stuffers”).
  • Promote universally appealing products in a temporarily featured category (call them “the season’s best gifts”).
  • Highlight seasonally extended returns policies during the path to purchase to minimize any anticipated buyer’s remorse and close the sale.

Please schedule an inquiry or Guidance Session with me if you’d like to discuss these areas further. Happy holiday planning!