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The goal of the market system is to provide products that meet customers’ expectations. And more often than not, that involves some degree of personalization.
Until recently, achieving this personalization was challenging because everything had to be mass-produced. But with advancing technology and business processes, that’s changing. Products are becoming inherently more customizable as time goes by.
The question for many retailers and brands today is: How can we customize more?
Fortunately, this post has some answers. We explore some of the strategies you can use for better product personalization in the future so you can draw in more customers, build loyalty, and ultimately, make what you sell more exciting to your target audience.
Use Modular Designs
One option is to use modular designs. These allow customers to swap parts in and out at will, letting them personalize their items.
Mobile phone retailers tried this during the 2010s, but it didn’t really work. However, there are all sorts of product categories where it makes sense. For example, the gel blaster ecosystem is currently enormous because of modularity. Players can swap in and out items whenever they want to improve range or accuracy.
Robotics is another area that’s seeing growth in the modular market. Instead of buying complete machines, consumers are looking for options that allow them to customize the shape and behaviour of their robots, giving them different capabilities based on the context.
Even Dell gets in on the modular approach for its desktop computers. It allows customers to select things like the RAM and harddrive, and then it gets its in-house staff to build the machines bespoke for customers.
Whether this approach will work for your products depends considerably on what you sell. However, it’s always worth a shot to see if it is something that might improve your overall prospects.
Leverage Mass Customization Tech
You could also try leveraging mass customization technology. These devices allow you to make thousands of customized products at scale to meet the needs of large audiences.
Mass customization is something that takes time to set up. But thanks to new and innovative devices like 3-D printers, it is becoming far more common as time goes by. It’s possible to create intricate objects and chassis by printing them out from customer designs.
If you decide to use mass customization technology, ensure you work with a partner who understands the field. You need someone who can slot processes into your existing workflows, allowing you to provide a seamless service to your customers that just works. Begin by offering customizations on your most popular lines and then work outwards from there. Ultimately, you want a situation where you can offer personalization options on the majority of what you sell to meet more customer needs.
Nike By You is an example of this technology already in action. It allows people to build shoes from scratch and print them out the way they want, without having to go through any complicated processes along the way.
Use AI Personalization
You could also look into the idea of using AI to personalize your products better. Modern machine learning systems are highly capable and able to achieve incredible results with minimal input.
For example, you can use AI to analyze customer data and seek recommended and tailored options. This approach makes life simpler for customers by showing them what they should buy and which options suit their requirements best.
You can do this by training AI models on user behaviour. When you see one person buying something, it may indicate that it’s useful for another.
The best AI personalization tools don’t use specific customers’ personal data to make recommendations. Instead, they leverage customer characteristic information, which often yields superior results. Here, you’re not trying to learn about an individual customer but instead trying to understand how someone like them might react to suggestions using publicly available or anonymous aggregate data.
Use Custom Mailer Boxes
A simpler idea is to get custom mailer boxes. With these, you aren’t necessarily personalizing the products, just the packaging, to provide a unique experience.
What’s nice about this approach is that it is simple and effective, and it works for products that aren’t easy to personalize. You simply get a third-party mailer box brand to create the unique boxes for your customers, and then ship them out.
Custom mailer boxes make sense when you’re trying to add value without spending a lot of money. As a small investment, they give customers a custom-feeling experience while avoiding sudden price spikes.
Add User-Friendly Customization Interfaces
Another approach for better product customization is to use user-friendly customization interfaces. These allow users to do the hard work of customization themselves, you don’t have to.
Many websites already have these up and running, so there’s nothing stopping you from borrowing their ideas. Furthermore, if you’re worried about managing the back end, you can get third-party developers to do this for you.
User-friendly customization interfaces work because they make personalization accessible. Anyone can choose bespoke products, regardless of complexity.
If you can deliver something as versatile as Canva, that’s even better. These allow you to provide users with templates they can use during their designs.
Create Flexible Manufacturing And Supply Chain Networks
You can also make your products more personalized by creating flexible manufacturing and supply chain networks. You need partners who can accept and process eclectic orders efficiently.
Creating these types of networks takes a long time, so don’t expect it overnight. However, working with partners and telling them what you expect is critical for developing such systems. If you can communicate more effectively with suppliers about your needs and help them implement them, you often find that you go a long way.
For example, Adidas Speedfactory is a process the company uses to create custom shoes. Users simply upload what they want, and the factory’s automated systems get on with it.
Alongside this, it may be worth adding third-party integrations and partnerships. Again, these enhance the customer experience by expanding options without internal build-outs.
Many brands do this by leveraging the power of APIs, which draw various pieces of software together. These allow businesses to communicate more effectively with themselves, leading to better overall product design and development.
Include The Community
When it comes to highly effective product personalization, it also pays to include the community. Letting customers co-create their products is a great way to get them involved and excited about what you sell.
This approach works because it is a type of loyalty trap. Customers know that they can only personalize products if they go to you, so they are far more likely to use you.
One way to do this is at scale where customers and clients vote on the things they’d like you to include. The other is to add APIs, as suggested early. These make it simple for the community to shift the direction.
Add Subscriptions
Finally, you could offer personalization via subscriptions. The idea here is to keep a flow of incoming coming so that you have the resources to provide your customers with bespoke options over time.
For example, you could start customers with an entry-level product and then add to it over time the longer they maintain their subscriptions. Video games did this in the past, but now it is something that companies selling physical products are considering.
Adobe Creative Cloud is a great example of this. The longer people subscribe to its services, the more likely they are to benefit from upgrades and new features.
