What is Product Customization?
Product customization is an important part of the e-commerce world. Essentially, it refers to when businesses customize products to sell, allowing customers to choose from a variety of colors, elements, or other features.
Making products customizable could mean a variety of different things depending on the industry. For example, it could be referring to adding toppings or extra flavors in the Food & Beverage industry. Meanwhile, it could mean allowing customers to add special engravings on their metal and wood accessories in the jewelry industry.
The options are boundless, providing customers with plenty of freedom to choose how to self-express. There is no better way to discover all the different options you have than to look at examples of customization in global marketing.
E-commerce custom products trends: what you need to know
In any industry, being aware of the current custom products trends is a great way to give your business a competitive edge. You might even understand how to become a trendsetter in the future.
Speaking of trends, it’s easy to understand that personalization is becoming a key feature for consumers. According to recent McKinsey research, 71% of consumers expect to find personalized products and 76% get frustrated when they don’t find customization.
Did you know that according to product customization statistics, 1 in 3 consumers who want customization feels like the usual products on the market don’t meet their standards? That is a lot of the market, and you could easily capture its attention by giving your own product customization examples for them to peruse or purchase.
A product customization example might be engraving jewelry with special effects, configuring the product so it looks more personalized and printing designs onto clothing that the customer chooses.
There are so many different customized marketing strategy examples that exist out there, it is a good idea to look to your industry leaders and see what they are doing. Market research can help you get an idea of what product customization strategy might work best for your e-commerce business.
Benefits of personalization in e-commerce
There are many benefits of personalization in e-commerce. Selling customized products for businesses is a great way to garner the attention of those who are seeking to fulfill their self-expression needs and want to personalize the products that they buy.
Let’s go over the advantages of e-commerce customization:
- Increased sales
Whether you want to boost your sales directly or make your average order value more impressive, one of the top benefits of personalization in e-commerce is probably increased sales.
You might be wondering, how can customization aid in improving customer value, so much so that you will see increased sales that are worth the effort and resources put into offering customization?
Being able to offer customization options to your products, such as letting customers choose what color a cap is or what to engrave on their ring, can boost your sales so much that they double.
Studies have shown that a majority of customers are willing to pay more for a customized product, so having that option is very likely to make paying customers pay more when they check out.
- Improved customer experience and satisfaction
Customers love to design their own products. If you are able to help them add what their heart desires to what they purchase, it can help them enjoy the product more. Even something as simple as picking someone’s favorite color or theme of an item can go a long way.
- Increased conversion rate
Another of the wonderful product customization benefits is the potential for significantly increased conversion rates.
Product Customization: are there disadvantages?
You might be wondering now, what are the disadvantages of customized products? Surely there must be some cons to balance out the pros. Here are a few disadvantages you might encounter:
- Product customization could be tricky to implement;
- It can be expensive;
- You need to manage customer expectations;
- Are you able to efficiently manufacture customized products?
In general, disadvantages of customizing products exist if the way you offer them could be better.
If you offer customized products for businesses, you might be imposing a new kind of expectation on your own business. Customers might begin expecting more from you, or they might expect the customized products to be exactly what they imagine them to be in their minds. This may lead to their expectations being incongruent with the actual product results, which can be problematic.
Still, for many e-commerces, the advantages of customization outweigh the potential negatives. With all these benefits of customization in mind, you might want to consider creating a customized products website. This means that when your site sells products, customers are able to choose certain options that enable them to customize their purchases.
Some customized product examples
Some industries are easier to give mass customization examples of because they lend to easier customization. Looking at mass customization product examples can be a great way to get inspiration for your own projects.
Some of the best customized products examples include:
- Customizable accessories;
- Clothing;
- Jewelry;
- Sporting goods;
- Food and beverage products;
- Gadget & gifting;
- Home decoration;
- Packaging.
It could help your e-commerce store to see what the top brands that offer customization do.
For food and beverage products, Starbucks does very well in letting customers personalize their drinks however they wish. This has resulted in an excellent sense of loyalty towards the brand in their returning customers, who always pick the personalized drinks that they want to experience.
Customized services examples might include sites that allow customers to personally choose a graphic design and then print those personalized designs onto clothing.
How to start using Product Customization in your e-commerce?
If you have never done any product customization before, it is probably confusing to think about the product customization websites and options you might have. Worried about external technical intervention? Don’t be.
The truth is that getting started with e-commerce product customization isn’t all that hard or complicated – all you need to do is have the right software that simply integrates with e-commerce. Whether it’s a custom product builder, 3D product configurator or another product customization app, integration is very important.
As long as your e-commerce product customization or the custom design websites you use have the proper integrations, you won’t need any external technical intervention or support.