Increase Customer Retention 
3 min read 
Category Page 
In this article, we explore how to create relevant experiences on category pages for existing customers who return to your online store.
In digital retail, the first purchase is the perfect moment to start building a relationship that goes beyond a computer screen, crystalizing the digital journey and blending it with real-life emotion. From unboxing experiences that incorporate free samples to leveraging social media accounts, relevant brand hashtags, personalized notes, and rewards for customers who choose eco-friendly packaging, a wide range of strategies exist to start building loyalty.
Ultimately, if shoppers happen to be satisfied with their first purchase, the next challenge is to trigger another purchase, whether they would hunt for replenishment products or complementary items.
Similar to the memorable product unboxing experience every first-time shopper would appreciate, let’s explore how that same level of attention can be delivered via your category pages when a shopper connects a second time with your brand.
Use Past Purchase Information to Automatically Recommend the Most Relevant Products
Use a combination of Artificial Intelligence and valuable customer insights to understand the relationships between all products of your catalog – both from a behavioral (“Shoppers Who Viewed This Also Viewed”) and transactional (“Customers Who Bought This Also Bought”) perspective. Nosto offers a wide range of algorithms that can be actioned through different products – and using Nosto’s Category Merchandising, you can set up a personalized sorting rule for category pages while maximizing profit for existing customers. This allows you to use unique shoppers preferences and information about their last transaction to recommend the most relevant products.
Sort by Margin to Increase Profitability
Along with establishing a layer of personalization, we will choose ‘Margin Percentage’ as a product attribute and give it a weight of 100%. This will promote products based on their relative margin percentage by sorting by high-margin, or low-margin products relative to other items in the category.
Once this rule is saved, it’s ready to be applied to all segments of existing customers.
Then, select a specific category and create a new Sequence, choosing the relevant sorting rule and segment.
Optimize Your Setup for the Strongest Performance
Unsure if implementing this strategy is relevant for your business? You can use Nosto’s A/B Testing & Optimization to test multiple sequences against one another.
Using Nosto’s A/B Testing & Optimization, you can optimize for best performance and action even more performing variations of your category pages. All sorting rules, highlight rules & segments are supported to run A/B Tests.
For example, Skinnydip London sought to analyze the impact of automated merchandising on sale and non-sale categories. For the non-sale category test, non-discounted products were prioritized on the respective Category page to increase AOV and revenue. Meanwhile, discounted items were demoted. This variation was tested against Skinnydip’s default page setup, where new and best-selling products are manually mixed together and “new” products are based on the brand’s assumption of which products would perform well:
Continue reading: Read our case study featuring Skinnydip for an inside look at how the brand uses Category Merchandising to achieve an 8x ROI, covering annual cost in just one month.
