Before the technology was available to present online shoppers with personalized product recommendations, there were Nordstrom personal shoppers. By knowing their customers and their preferred brands, styles and price points, personal shoppers would show each customer only carefully selected items that were personalized just for her. The result?

Up-sells, cross-sells, increased revenue and loyal customers.

Fast forward to the early days of online selling. Amazon.com became the model for online retailers with its basic but effective recommendations: If you like this book, you may also like these books. From there, although it's taken years and a few generations of software, online personalized product recommendations have now arrived. Apparel retailers can now replicate a Nordstrom personal shopper on their sites, offering customers the same level of shopping experience they might receive at their favorite stores with salespeople that know them well and help them every time they visit.

In the past several years, a number of different software vendors have introduced personalization solutions that enable apparel retailers to dynamically merchandise their sites with cross-sells and up-sells, with the goal of providing a better shopping experience and boosting sales. Each vendor takes a different approach to the way it formulates recommendations, but all have shown they can deliver a range of benefits for online apparel retailers.

Personalization Boosts AOV, Conversion and Online Revenue

For apparel retailers, personalized product recommendations (PPR) can increase:
*Overall online revenue 10 percent to 30 percent
*Average order value (AOV) 45 percent
*Conversion rates 90 percent
*Click-through rates 150 percent

PPR can also decrease shopping cart abandonment, inappropriate cross-sells, returned items and IT time and budget.

Formal, quantitative research further makes the case for the value of PPR. PPR vendor MyBuys and the e-tailing group, a market research firm that specializes in e-tailing, have surveyed merchants and consumers for two years running on a range of issues related to personalization. Their first survey, from June 2008, found that:
*Some 77 percent of consumers report that they have made additional purchases when they have encountered personalized product recommendations online. More than half of consumers say they usually peruse those recommendations when they are offered.
*A significant percentage of consumers not only welcome but expect online merchants to provide personalized experiences and product recommendations. Consumers say they value the convenience, time-savings and ease of choosing the right product they get from a more relevant interaction with the merchant.
*More than one-third of consumers (36 percent) indicate they award more loyalty to merchants who effectively meet their demand for true personalization in the shopping experience.

Consumer Attitudes Toward Personalization
Some apparel decision-makers still question the degree to which customers expect or want recommendations. The second MyBuys/e-tailing group report, Delivering the added value consumers expect from personalized product recommendations: a practical guide for e-tailers, published in June 2009, surveyed 1,000 consumers with annual household incomes of $50,000+ who shop online at least two or three times per month. The survey found that consumers:
*Expect to find personalized product recommendations throughout the site and in post-order communication
*Are compelled to make more purchases when they see products that are truly personalized
*Purchase more often when they see personalized product recommendations on a site
*Expect merchants to know them and consider past purchases when making recommendations
*Get annoyed when recommendations are not relevant to them

Approaches to Apparel Recommendations
Apparel retailers typically take one of the following approaches to making recommendations on their site:
*The recommendations take the form of a basic, merchandised "complete the look" where the shopper is on a product detail page looking at a single item and sees recommendations for items that complete the outfit. This approach is sensible, but consumers are more interested in seeing items specifically tailored to their preferences. In fact, 44 percent say that they get annoyed and will abandon a site with irrelevant recommendations.
*The other approach is for the retailer to offer personalized, highly relevant recommendations as a Nordstrom personal shopper does. For example, if a shopper is looking at tops, and your recommendation software knows this shopper likes scoop necks and Capri pants, it will show her those items.

The second approach is the more effective way to cross-sell and up-sell. While showing the pre-merchandised outfit or random recommendations is better than no recommendations, showing items that fit a specific shopper's preferences has been proven to boost AOV, revenue and return visits - as noted above, 77 percent say they make additional purchases.

Where to Place Recommendations
Where should recommendations appear on your site? The home page and category pages can work, but the two most strategic places are the product detail page and the shopping cart page. (And here's a hint on messaging: The survey found that the messaging consumers prefer is You may also like, which is perfect messaging for an emotional purchase like apparel.)
*Consumers buy the most on the product detail page; this is a great place for cross-sells and up-sells.
*The shopping cart is the highest-converting page, for the same reason that candy at the checkout stand in the grocery store sells so well. Here, apparel retailers will want to place impulse purchases, so that a shopper who has already bought a pair of pants and a shirt will be offered such items as earrings, a scarf and a belt.
Note also that sending consumers personalized alerts is highly effective. Alerts can be customized to your brand and can reflect each shopper's top-of-mind desires, based on their stated preferences and what your recommendation software has learned about them over time. Starred reviews that offer candid assessments from other site shoppers also help sell apparel; in fact, 66 percent say that reviews in a recommendation add credibility and 26 percent say they motivate them to buy more.

Appealing to Today's Savvy Shopper
The apparel sites that are most successful at selling online are those that get to know their customers and surround them with merchandise that's relevant to them - just like a Nordstrom personal shopper. In fact, research shows that shoppers have come to expect this level of service and are accustomed to being catered to online. Sites that don't do this fail to capture today's shoppers, who are more savvy about online shopping, have a short attention span, and expect a user experience to be 100 percent tailored to them. Today's personalization technology enables you to provide that experience.

Lisa Joy Rosner is vice president of marketing, MyBuys.