Personalization is for Big Companies, Right?

Personalization is a trend that big companies have taken to, but small businesses have lessons to learn, also. Personalized Web sites don't need to be a technological tour-de-force and they can provide simple benefits with simple effort. Stop & Shop, through its Peapod online shopping service, shows us a simple way to personalize many Web sites.

In fact, it's so simple that I don't know why I don't see a lot more of it. Stop & Shop, like all supermarkets, already hands out loyalty cards that shoppers swipe at the register for discounts and coupons. But they allow you to link your offline and online purchases through Peapod, so you can see everything you've bought online and offline in one place.

This is a killer idea for any merchant that sells online and offline, especially ones for whom customers consistently reorder the same items. Your grocery list contains much the same items week in and week out, and many businesses are similar. If your customers buy many of the same items, but some buy online, some through a sales rep, and others over the phone, why not put all that order history online so that customers can quickly check off an item and order online?

Stop & Shop used a loyalty card to track purchases, but you can use any method you want--you just need some method of linking all purchases from the same customer together.

If you make online orders this simple, you might find that more people are using your cheap online channel than expensive in-person and phone ordering. Personalization can be that simple. Don't let the fancy word cause you to ignore opportunities to save your customer time and inconvenience.