Online stores have become extremely good at showing products.
The harder problem is helping customers understand which products are relevant to them.
Two concepts can help create a more contextual shopping experience:
Personalization
and
Bundling
When combined thoughtfully, they can change the way customers discover products.
What does personalization mean?
Personalization means adapting part of the shopping experience based on information about the customer or their current intent.
That might include:
- Preferences
- Previous interactions
- Product interests
- Shopping context
The exact approach depends on the product and the data available.
The important principle is relevance.
Personalization should help a customer find something useful rather than simply make the interface look different.
Why generic catalogues can be overwhelming
Large product catalogues provide choice.
But more choice isn't always easier.
A customer may encounter hundreds of products without knowing where to start.
Personalized discovery can potentially reduce that complexity by presenting more relevant possibilities.
What is product bundling?
A bundle combines related products into a single shopping proposition.
The relationship could be based on:
- Complementary use
- A particular occasion
- A particular need
- A common combination
The best bundles have a reason for existing.
Bundling isn't just cross-selling
There's a difference between:
"You may also like..."
and:
"These products work together for this particular use case."
The second is a more intentional experience.
Combining personalization and bundling
Imagine a shopper has a particular purpose.
Instead of showing thousands of unrelated products, the system could help them discover:
Relevant product → complementary product → useful bundle
The result is a shopping journey based more on context.
Designing for discovery
This requires more than adding a recommendation widget.
The product needs to understand relationships between products and the experience needs to communicate those relationships clearly.
Questions include:
- Why is this product being recommended?
- Why do these products belong together?
- Can the customer modify the bundle?
- Is the bundle genuinely useful?
- Is the personalization transparent?
The genXshop approach
genXshop is built around three ideas:
Discover. Personalize. Bundle.
The product represents genXarc's exploration of a shopping experience that places more emphasis on discovery and contextual product relationships.
What product teams can learn
A useful ecommerce experience doesn't necessarily need to add more features.
Sometimes the better approach is to rethink the journey.
Instead of:
Catalogue → Search → Product → Cart
a discovery-oriented experience can explore:
Context → Discovery → Personalization → Product relationships → Bundle → Purchase
The right model depends on the customer and the products.
Final thought
Personalization and bundling are not goals by themselves.
They are tools for solving a more fundamental problem:
Helping people find products that make sense for what they are trying to accomplish.
That product-thinking approach is what genXarc is exploring with genXshop.