Take back control of your data, achieve better results and pay less
Exactly 24 years ago, in August 2000, American researchers identified the benefits of on-site personalised product recommendations. Already back then, when the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears still dominated the music charts, they wrote “What started as a novelty has turned into a serious business tool”. Fast forward almost 25 years, and on-site recommendations are more prevalent than ever. Over and over the technology has proven to be a revenue- and customer loyalty booster.
Third-party personalisation tools
Currently most web stores personalise their digital environments in one way or another with a third party SaaS solution. Common examples include personalised search and showing content blocks with recommended products to help the visitor choose. Some examples of such recommendations are best sellers, similar products and products viewed by other customers. Another example is showing products which are frequently bought together with the product viewed (aiming to increase cart values).
Up until now the market for e-commerce personalisation is dominated by dozens of third-party SaaS tools like Bloomreach, Barilliance, Monetate, Emarsys, Squeezely and Tweakwise. The value of personalisation is undisputed and is further illustrated by the fact that the Israeli personalisation startup Dynamic Yield was acquired twice by large global brands (first McDonald’s in 2019 for around 300 million dollar and later by MasterCard).
With their specific expertise, quick set up and large marketing budgets, SaaS companies paved the way for the widespread adoption of personalisation.
Upsides of SaaS are no longer outweighing the downsides
We are entering a new era in which the advantages of a third-party solution are shrinking and no longer outweigh the growing downsides.
Are you comfortable sharing literally all your data with a third party? Seriously? In fact you are monthly paying someone else to make them smarter with your data… From the first visit to your customers’ personal preferences, exact cart contents to your total yearly online store revenue, your SaaS solution provider and its employees know it all.
Downsides of SaaS
- The algorithms are typically black-boxes, hiding their inner workings;
- The behavioural data of your customers is stored on the vendor’s server, typically with limited export-options creating a vendor lock-in;
- You have less control over the functionalities. The tools are generalist, both in their offerings and the solutions themselves;
- There’s a danger of service termination in case of bankruptcy or an acquisition;
- SaaS solutions need to make money too and therefore the monthly subscription fees can accumulate easily and consume unnecessary large parts of your budget.
The world has changed: time to reclaim ownership of your data
We at Relevant Online have always strongly believed that having your own solution in the Cloud is preferred over a third party solution. Five years ago we wrote on our blog that first party product recommendations (Dutch) in the cloud were the next inevitable step for web shops with ambition. At that time Google and Amazon entered the market for personalization solutions and started offering recommendation systems through their Cloud services, utilising their storage, computing- and connective capabilities.
Until recently the high costs stopped many of our customers from moving their personalisation to the Cloud. Options in the Cloud are now more easy to implement and at much lower costs. With the possibilities of Google’s “Vertex AI” and “Vertex AI Search for Retail” you have an alternative that is not only much better, it is also much more affordable. Therefore, now is the time to move your personalisation tooling to the Cloud and take control of your data at lower costs.
The benefits of first party personalisation can no longer be ignored
- Full ownership and control of your data;
- Reduced dependency on third parties;
- Full customizability of the solution;
- Faster loading (not via the DOM but serverside) improving your page’s Core Web Vitals (speed, interactivity and visual stability) and positively impacting your SEO ranking;
- The new setup allows for future improvement to further increase the effectiveness of the model;
- Cost reduction: up to 5 times less than your current monthly subscription fees.
Conclusion
In our humble opinion this is the time to reclaim ownership of your sensitive data and start with personalisation in the Cloud. We are here to help, so give us a call or send me an email and we can discuss in further detail the implications and benefits.
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About Relevant Online: We are frontrunners in Data Tracking, Data Engineering and Data Science helping you to make the most out of your data.
In an ever evolving industry Relevant Online develops and optimises (data) architecture, tracking, dashboarding and builds (predictive) models to fit your needs.
