People like feeling special. They spend a lot on unique products so they can stand out from the crowd. But what’s unique today may be common tomorrow.

Big brands have boosted sales by making customized products for their customers. Smaller stores can too. Technology has improved enough for you to make a product fit a particular customer’s desires.

As an idea, customized products take on many forms. Each can get you more customers. To offer personalized products in a way that brings more sales, you need a smooth store website.

Get a Shopify theme with features that make customization orders easy. A Shopify expert will help you choose the right theme. Download Debutify, the highest converting Shopify theme, for free to get your store fit for turning these sales.

• Benefits of Offering Customization Through Your Shopify Store
• How to Drive Conversions With Personalization on Shopify Stores
• What is The Benefit of Customization?
• What Are The Advantages of Selling Customized Products?
• What Are The Advantages of Mass Customization?
• What Are The Main Types of Mass Customization
• Does Shopify Allow Customization?
• What is The Use of Customize?
• Why do People Customize?
• What is The Advantages of Customization in Advertising?
• What Are Some Disadvantages of Mass Customization?
• What Are The Types of Mass Customization?
• Can You Customize Website on Shopify?
• What is Customization Explain With an Example?
• What Are Some Examples of Mass customization?
• How Much Can You Customize Shopify?
• Can I Code in Shopify?

Benefits of Offering Customization Through Your Shopify Store

eCommerce personalization is one of the most effective conversion drivers for Shopify stores. 

Spanning beyond segmentation, tailoring the customer experience for each individual user is a top priority for some of the top eCommerce companies in the world. 

Read Also: Why is Product Customization Ruling The E-commerce Industry?

And that’s because it drives revenue, customer lifetime value, and loyalty. In fact, 61% of online shoppers surveyed stated that they’re more likely to buy from a personalized offer. 

While personalization can seem daunting, there are a host of strategies and apps that make it simple for Shopify sellers. 

Personalized marketing is a strategy where brands create a tailored experience for their audience based on the information they gather about who an individual shopper is, including their demographics, psychographics, behavioral data, and customer intent signals. 

While plenty of companies personalize the onsite customer experience, it’s particularly effective for eCommerce brands. Here’s why:

1. Personalization is Cost-Effective 

Personalization is an effective way of driving revenue for Shopify sellers. 

It’s also cost-effective. Recent data shows that personalization can reduce customer acquisition costs by as much as 50% and increase marketing spend efficiency by 30%. 

So while you might spend a bit more launching a personalized campaign, your budget will go further, making this an economical part of your marketing strategy. 

But personalization is not a silver-bullet strategy only used for your social media advertising campaigns; it should be part of an omnichannel marketing strategy that draws customers in and keeps them coming back for more. 

2. Improved Customer Loyalty 

It costs less to keep the customers you have than to acquire new customers, and personalization helps brands do just that. 

Personalizing the customer experience provides your shoppers with a personal connection, which was long a part of the traditional, brick-and-mortar shopping experience. 

eCommerce shoppers have far more options today, so a personal touch helps brands to stand out. 

Consumers are becoming accustomed to the individualized, tailored customer experience they receive on social media and Amazon. 

Delivering exclusive campaigns and personally suggested products gives customers the personal experience they crave and can drive loyalty. 

3. Increased Average Order Value  

Personalized offers, campaigns, and recommendations provide targeted promotions and products to customers based on their past browsing behavior and other personal data. 

This makes the offers far more relevant, increasing sales by offering customers items they are most likely to be interested in. 

In fact, nearly half of all shoppers report making an impulse purchase after receiving a personalized recommendation from a brand. 

More than 20% of shoppers say they spent more than $50 on a single purchase from a personalized offer, and 7% spend more than $100. 

Even more impressive, 85% of impulse shoppers were satisfied with their purchase, with just 5 % of shoppers returning their items. 

This means in addition to increasing eCommerce sales as a whole, personalization increases customer lifetime value and average order value. 

4. Better Connection with Customers

Today’s eCommerce experience is not just about transactions; it’s about relationships. 

With so many options and competitors, especially online, you can’t win just by creating products and launching your store. To be competitive, eCommerce companies need to humanize their brands and foster relationships with their customers. 

Personalized marketing shows customers you care about them individually. That connection can help you build a stronger relationship for months and years to come.  

How to Drive Conversions With Personalization on Shopify Stores

Personalization makes the buying experience frictionless, and limits the paradox of choice so consumers can complete their orders and get back to their lives. 

Many points in the customer journey offer potential for personalization, including videos, landing pages, homepages, ads, emails, push notifications, product and service recommendations, and transactional messages, such as receipts and shipping notifications. 

So how does personalization look in action? Let’s look at a few examples and explore why they work. 

1. Personalize Your Offers Based on Customer Intent

One of the most effective ways to convert website visitors into loyal customers is by tailoring the customer experience, including the promotions offered, to each individual customer based on their behaviors and customer intent.

After all, some customer segments are more likely to convert when incentivized with promotion, whereas others have high intent to purchase and don’t need an incentive to complete their order.

Treating all of your Shopify store visitors the same will lead to:

• Lost revenue as you offer discounts to those who would have converted without them.
• Eroded margins because of generic offers despite the customer acquisition channel.
• Damaged brand perception as you train your customers to expect a discount, or come to view you as a “discount brand”.

So personalizing the promotions and discounts you offer is a powerful strategy that impacts more than just conversion rate:

• Improved conversion rates
• Increased average order value
• Reduced cart abandonment
• Protected brand perception
• Improved margins.

Presenting promotions only to those who require one to convert not only drives conversion rates and revenue but also protects your margins by reducing the average discount rate.

2. Tailor the Customer Experience With Quizzes 

The cornerstone of personalization is data. 

If you aren’t able to collect data on your customers, you can’t very well personalize their experience on your site or off of it. 

That’s why quizzing your audience is such an effective strategy. You can leverage quizzes on your Shopify store to:

• Collect data about your customers
• Increase onsite engagement
• Capture leads and improve conversions 
• Gamify the product selection process. 

For example, Warby Parker uses a quiz to segment customers and personalize their recommended products, asking questions like which material the user likes, and what shape of frame they prefer.

3. Custom Product Recommendations

There are many reasons customers abandon their carts and browsing sessions, from a poor user experience to being surprised with unexpected fees at checkout.

But one of the most common reasons is that they either couldn’t find a product that resonated with them or selecting the best product or product mix was confusing.

The missing piece is personalization.

If your Shopify store has a lot of SKUs or if your products are in a new or unknown category, using demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data to dynamically provide personalized product recommendations can:

• Increase conversion rate
• Improve average order value
• Reduce shopping cart abandonment rate
• Provide an elevated customer experience.

Presenting products selected specifically for each customer based on their unique traits removes friction from the user experience onsite and allows the customer journey to keep moving in the right direction.

4. Delight Customers With Personalized Rewards

While developing a customer base of loyal, raving fans isn’t a simple process, a good start is to personalize the customer experience by providing rewards and incentives tailored to each individual.

And Shopify sellers can do this with a basic rewards program that identifies unique characteristics of their customers.

For example, the activewear brand Outdoor Voices provides a $20 discount on a purchase of $100 or more with their personalized half-birthday offer.

Acknowledging the accomplishments, events, and special dates in your customers’ lives can foster a personal touch that often leads to loyalty.

Loyal customers are the drivers of a strong customer lifetime value , the building block of a sustainable eCommerce company.

5. Drive Average Order Value with Personalized Bundles

Adding bundles to your product offerings is an excellent way to increase your average order value and improve revenue per visitor.

But you can take it a step further and enable personalization by allowing customers to build their own bundles.

Several Shopify apps allow customers to add preferred products to a custom kit.

What is The Benefit of Customization?

Customization is about what the user can do themselves. Users can adapt a product or service to their own preferences, exercising control over their own experience. It can increase their happiness and their engagement.

This concept can be elevated by a company through mass customization. Whenever a business is able to efficiently mass produce products that meet individual consumers’ desires, they’re offering their customers an opportunity to be unique.

For example, a basic model of a car can be customized through different features (e.g., GPS, paint color, wheel style, etc.) at the buyer’s discretion.

There are many benefits to offering customization options to your customers.

1. Charge More.

Adding personalization allows you to charge more for products because people understand the setup is more intensive than a cookie-cutter approach.

Studies show people are willing to pay about 20 percent more for a personalized product.

However, adding personalization may not cost you much at all, if you are strategic about the way you add the customization. Keep in mind, you can create a template and adjust it for each customer.

Things Remembered is a good example of a company charging a bit more for personalized products. You can find some of the same items at big-box retailers, but they won’t be personalized, so people seem to be willing to pay a premium for their products.

On top of that, they have a minimum charge of $10 and additional upcharges for longer names, monograms, and designs. Consumers search for the item they want, then add on their customization options.

2. Build Customer Loyalty.

If customers can get the exact item or service they want from you, they will come back again and again.

Why would they go to your competitor, who likely doesn’t offer the same customization options? If you give them what they want, they’ll tend to be loyal to your brand.

The key to building loyalty through customization is to first make sure your options are unique from what your competitors offer. Perhaps your competitors offer an option to add a first name to the back of a white T-shirt.

However, you not only offer the ability to add the name, but you also offer the shirt in 10 colors. Maybe you also allow them to put their first initial on the front pocket to make the item stand out even more.

The more you can stand out with your customization, the better.

3. Make Luxury Items More Attractive.

If you sell a luxury item, adding the ability for the consumer to customize that product can make it even more attractive.

Imagine you are about to spend five or six figures on an item. You would likely want to ensure that item was exactly what you wanted, including colors and amenities.

One example of a company that offers customization in this vein is Formula Boats, where the consumer can create a custom boat. The site offers the ability to add a graphic of choice on the side, and edit anything from the engine type to the color and graphics used.

Of course, there is an upcharge for changing different elements, but the consumer can still customize and buy the exact product they want, creating the changes through the site’s online portal.

4. Win Over Millennials.

Millennials make up a huge portion of the buying public, and with them coming of age recently, they will be consumers of goods and services for many years to come.

About 55 percent of millennials indicate they like personalized experiences, especially those associated with a good cause.

Imagine if you could tap into the huge market of baby boomers. Just picture how many sales that would equal and how your business would grow.

Did you know the millennial generation is even larger than the baby boomers? Those aged 18 to 34 in 2015 made up 75.4 million of the population, while baby boomers made up 74.9 million. If you’re not already marketing to millennials, you’d be smart to shift your strategy accordingly.

5. Sell Online, But Stay in Retail.

One issue manufacturers sometimes run into is the difficulty of breaking into online sales after they’ve established a presence with placing their products in brick-and-mortar retailers.

If the manufacturer starts selling online, the retailers they work with may feel they are being undercut and grow angry. Big-box retailers may even stop carrying the product, which can hurt your bottom line.

One example of a company that encountered this issue is Nike.

Their products were already in retailers all over the world, but they wanted to break into the online retail market. Their solution was to offer the ability to buy custom shoes with their site.

What Are The Advantages of Selling Customized Products?

Brands are very aware that personalization creates value for customers, but it’s not just huge high-street names that are generating revenue from product customization. It’s easier than ever to start a business, since online stores remove overheads associated with the traditional retail model. Here are some more reasons why product personalization is taking over.

1. Generate more sales

Personalizing products doesn’t just help increase sales, it also keeps your customers satisfied, which promotes loyalty and word-of-mouth recommendations.

A study by Deloitte suggests that, on average, in different retail sectors, 36% of consumers would consider buying customized products or services. If that figure surprises you, just listen to this:1 in 5 of these consumers would be willing to pay 20% more for a personalized or exclusive product! This indicates a shift in consumer mentality away from monetary cost, and towards inherent value.  

In addition, 48% of customers would be willing to wait longer for a customized product or service. This means that while their personalized product is being created, customers have more time to browse and possibly even generate more sales.

2. Increase the profit margin

Before it was possible to quickly create custom products, businesses would stockpile products in bulk from a third-party manufacturer. That they might not sell was a risk that they just had to take. 

With in-house digital printing machines, it’s no longer necessary to print hundreds of thousands of identical items in the hope of making a profit. If you have a desktop UV LED printer, you can print very short runs of personalized items without the steep overheads of outsourcing the work.

3. Stand out from the competition

Picture the scene: a town has two clothes stores, both of which sell t-shirts. In the first, you can choose a design from a catalogue of 100 different images and patterns, all beautifully designed by talented graphic designers.

In the second shop, however, there is no catalogue – you can walk in and ask for any image you want – a photo of your nan for her 90th birthday, a cartoon of you as a superhero doodled by your niece, or just the words “do not disturb”. 

Given the choice, most people will choose to shop at store #2 and get their dream t-shirt, safe in the knowledge that nobody else has the same one. If you can offer unique products, custom-designed for each client, it’ll make a big difference in the decision-making process.  

4. No need for higher inventory costs

You don’t need to trash your existing business model to tap into the personalization market. There’s no need to throw out all your stock and buy a fresh batch. With a little ingenuity, you can customize the same items you already sell, simply by adding a special little touch. But that doesn’t mean you have to stockpile versions of your product – you can customize a single product as each order comes in.

For example, if you sell leather handbags, you could use a UV LED printer to print directly onto the leather, or you could use a desktop impact engraver to personalize stitch-on metal plates. With either option, you’ve made a relatively small investment that lets you increase the mark-up on your existing products.

5. Better customer insight

Customer data, consumer trends and buying habits are strong tools to have in any business arsenal. Having your own means of gaining an insight can give you a strong competitive advantage. Business without a product personalization offering can only gather data on the items they have in stock. If they allow their customers to customize the products, they can know their customers in ways their competitors can’t come close to.

With technologies like CRM and data analytics, companies can save the information of each customer and use it to offer products or services adapted to their tastes and preferences. Good personalization goes hand in hand with analytical technology.

Who knows – in the future, artificial intelligence might let companies use their customers’ personalization habits to anticipate the next big sales trend.

6. Increase customer loyalty

When they can personalize products according to their tastes, your customers get exactly what they want, and their satisfaction level goes up to eleven! They see the product as a unique item, with added value and designed to meet their specific needs. It is an adaptation to the consumer at the highest level and, of course, it’s one of the best ways to build loyalty.

If your customer feels like they have your undivided attention, they’ll be more likely to make a purchase or to establish a lasting relationship with the brand. Once they have that connection with your brand, your competitors will have to try even harder to get their attention.

7. Power the online business

In recent years sales in physical stores have been decreasing. This is largely due to the pressure of online stores who don’t have the same overheads and can offer cheaper products in a more convenient way. Also, with faster, more responsive websites, it’s easier to access the products, compare them and buy them; while in physical stores the buyer always has to search to find the best offer.

According to a recent study by Invesp Consulting, 59% of buyers find the products they want more easily in personalized online stores. In addition, 53% say that online stores with product customization offer better services.

Offering fully customized products turns online shopping into a unique experience, adapting your online store according to the interests of each customer and increasing the conversion of each visit to a sale.

What Are The Advantages of Mass Customization?

With mass customization, you can make products that aren’t one of a kind, but have some unique features — which can increase customer satisfaction.

Mass customization is the sweet spot between customized goods and mass production. It’s the idea that the product a consumer receives may not be one of a kind, but it will have some unique features. NikeiD is one of the forefathers of mass customization, allowing loyal customers to choose the color of their canvas, laces, and Swoosh.

While the benefits to the consumer are apparent — receiving a product that better meets their preferences — many companies wonder how mass customization will benefit their bottom line.

Here are 5 benefits of mass customization that can make your company more competitive.

Better profits

Mass customization allows companies to charge a premium for their product. While the costs of incorporating customized elements into a product will be slightly higher, that nominal increase is covered with a savvy pricing strategy. In this sense, mass customization is the perfect upsell.

Adding customized elements doesn’t have to be a costly endeavor, or disruptive to production lines. Apple found the perfect mass customization option with iPods and iPhones by offering after-market product engraving for personalization. The product was already completely assembled and ready to be shipped or engraved, depending on the customer preference. Small producers can offer the same type of mass customization with a Ponoko.

This strategy also helps move customers through the sales funnel. Those who were debating purchasing your product in the decision-making phase of the sales funnel may be tipped over into transacting when they see this benefit.

Improved customer satisfaction

Offering customization options improves customer satisfaction when they purchase a product or interact with a company. Studies show that personalization leading to a positive customer experience improves customer satisfaction by up to 20%. This improvement correlates with a 10-15% boost in conversion rates.

If the customer feels as though they’ve received something valuable for their money, or something that suits their sense of individuality, they’ll have a better relationship with your business. The higher the satisfaction, the more likely they are to engage in word-of-mouth marketing or user-generated content — both of which are incredibly valuable.

Reduced customer churn

Another side effect of better customer satisfaction is reduced customer churn. In other words, your company will retain more customers due to the perceived value derived from mass customization.

Your customer will also enjoy the experience of having items customized to their tastes over more generic products. As such, they’ll keep coming back to you for more rather than looking to the competition.

Streamlined production

One of the primary concerns for companies looking to incorporate mass customization is the impact on the production line. While production will be affected, it’s typically not as disruptive as one might think. In many cases, the production process isn’t affected until near completion or the customized components are created and ready for assembly. This element is where mass customization and pure customization vary the most.

Still, mass customization does impact production times and supply chain management. Businesses must take a strategic approach to minimize disruptions and ensure consistent streamlined production. Don’t hesitate to consult an expert in this area when exploring this opportunity.

Improved inventory management

One of the biggest impacts on the bottom line will be decreased inventory management costs for companies. These savings tend to dramatically outpace any increased production costs with mass customization. By using a just-in-time fulfillment strategy, your business can minimize overhead costs by reducing inventory storage and management.

Again, this becomes an issue of change management as it will alter the supply chain. Working with a specialist or consultant to reorganize and execute these changes can help mitigate frustrations and ensure a smooth transition into mass customization.

What Are The Main Types of Mass Customization

Now that you understand the benefits of mass customization, you can determine what approach works for your product and organization. There are 4 main types of mass customization:

Collaborative customization: In this process, the business and client interact closely to create a custom offering. Software as a service (SaaS) platforms with customized features are a prime example.

Adaptive customization: There are various preset customization options available, and the consumer can choose which ones they want. A sundae bar is a perfect analogy for adaptive customization.

Cosmetic customization: This is a high-level form of customization that changes the face of the product to offer more solutions. For example, selling soda in various predetermined sizes of cans and bottles so the consumer can choose the best fit for them.

Transparent customization: This form of customization uses consumer data to create personalized options. When you see product suggestions based on your online shopping cart, this is transparent customization.

Does Shopify Allow Customization?

Shopify’s front end is reasonably customizable – you can modify colors, language strings and that sort of thing yourself. You can work with a theme specialist to customize the look and feel of the front end, or buy a theme that meets your needs out of the box.

The back end is a different story. It is *possible* to modify the back end of shopify (for example, to add a field to your products), but the programming required is fairly advanced and not really feasible for the average shopowner. There are also hard restrictions in the back end (number of variants, for example) that simply cannot be overcome because the software is not open source.

Shopify is a very successful platform because it meets the needs of many online sellers. But if your needs are more unique and specific to your business, you will need to work with an expert to decide if the level of customization you need (whether it’s business logic, order processing, product customization, or even plain old look and feel) is something you can accomplish with Shopify.

What is The Use of Customize?

Customization allows users to make selections and set preferences in a system, with the intent of giving users more control over the user experience. Customization allows users to select the content, layout, functionality or design that appeals to them.

However, customization tools require work and input from users, so need to be designed in a way that entices and attracts usage, and provides adequate payoff for the work invested by the user.

Here are 5 tips for creating a successful customization experience:

1. Show users that customization is available.

It is not enough to offer customization to users. If users don’t know about the feature or can’t find it, they will not customize anything. Links to customization features should be (1) positioned near the content they relate to, and (2) well-named, with labels clearly explaining their function on the site. Users should be able to discover the tools as they interact with content.

2. Make customization easy to use.

Even if you have devoted users who by choice or by necessity spend a lot of time with your interface, it does not mean that they will suffer through a difficult process. If you get past the first hurdle of letting users know about customization options, you do not want to lose users by making the setup overly complex or time consuming.

Simple is better. For instance, intranet sites that want to encourage users to customize lists of links can add clear Add to List links on each page of the site. This allows the user a one-click way to customize content.

3. Consider layering the customization features.

A rich feature set is not for the good, because it can be overwhelming. This is doubly true for customization features, which are not users’ primary interest when using a system. (People use computers to get something done; tweaking the system itself is only a secondary task, at best.)

A good way to reduce the complexity of customization is to use progressive disclosure, where you only show users the most useful or most commonly used customization options at first. Secondary options are deferred to an “advanced options” screen. (As for tertiary options: don’t even offer them.)

4. Do it for a reason.

If you want users to bother with your customization tools, the features need to provide a clear benefit. Always think about why customization is necessary and what users will get from it.

You may want to allow users to select the background color of their interface, but is there adequate payoff or interest in that option to account for the additional cost of implementation?

You may want to allow users to move content areas around a page to create a unique experience, but again, it may not be adequate enticement for casual or nontechnical users. Apps may allow users to choose between list and grid views of content, but make sure that this significantly enhances the experience.

You must know your users’ interests and needs in order to provide the correct customization tools. Customization can be a topic that tests well in focus groups, for example, while it may not be used frequently once implemented.

To test customization, don’t ask users about their interest in it. Run a usability test on a prototype with customization features in place, and see if users notice or comment upon those features as they are completing typical tasks in the design.

5. Don’t rely on customization.

Users often won’t bother to customize the site, even if the system is clear and simple to use. Because of this, don’t depend on customization to make a good experience. Generic site experiences, with no customization, should be strong enough to support users.

You do not want a user staring at an empty screen as a result of them not engaging with customization features. (In fact, if the initial, non-customized, user experience isn’t compelling, very few users will stay around long enough to try the customization features.)

Why do People Customize?

Product customization is the key to serving your customer base successfully. Not all of your customers want the same thing or use your product the same way. Product customization is essential for delivering a personalized customer experience to each segment of users, and can drive customer loyalty and increase customer satisfaction.

Regardless of whether you sell a physical product or online software, your customer base has different wants and needs. Remembering that all of your customers are different, is critical to create a product that is attractive to as many people as possible.

As the old saying goes – if you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll appeal to no one. Instead of being just generally suitable for your clientele, you can customize your product to be specifically perfect to every different segment of users. 

Customization is a great business strategy because it makes customers happier; and happy customers are repeat customers! In retail, Deloitte found that 1 out of every 5 customers is willing to pay 20% more for a personalized or exclusive product.

Similarly a 2012 study on customization found, “customization increases perceived service quality, customer satisfaction, customer trust, and ultimately customer loyalty toward a service provider.” 

Why? For the very simple value that customization brings to the customer. Customers who can customize their experience find value either through exclusivity, in the form of a personalized, unique product,  or specificity in the form of a feature that works in a way that they would like.  

What is The Advantages of Customization in Advertising?

In order for personalized marketing to be successful, a company must be able to obtain as much personal information about a current or prospective customer as possible. Fortunately, there’s a vast sea of data on individual consumers today.

This data is then analyzed and leveraged to provide customized, targeted offers, recommendations, and messaging designed to appeal to the individual based on their past behavior, interests, and other data.

Digital media is one of the best mediums for personalized marketing and is popular with advertisers. Information may be tracked through the use of cookies, beacons, or interactive feedback tools on a website, providing a wealth of data that enables advertisers to fine-tune the ads shown to individual users and viewers on channels ranging from websites to YouTube and even television.

The big advantage of personalized marketing is that it allows a company to effectively target individual current and prospective customers, boosting the odds of engagement and conversions by appealing to the individual’s likes, needs, interests, and other preferences.

This type of targeted advertising creates higher conversions and ultimately is an incredibly lucrative sales path. According to Experian, personalized marketing emails received 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click-through rates than those without personalization. Companies that use personalized marketing typically increase their total sales by approximately 19%.

Personalized marketing not only leads to increased sales, but also happier customers. When presented with advertising that is customized and appealing to them, customers feel more connected to a company, which translates  directly into dollars spent.

Research shows that for approximately three-fourths of customers, email marketing that’s irrelevant to them is a frustration. What’s more, these same customers are less likely to engage with the brand, and these experiences directly influence their purchasing decisions.

What Are Some Disadvantages of Mass Customization?

Mass customization can be defined as the ability of a company to deliver modified goods and products to fulfil the needs of individual customers. The customized products are provided at the same price as of the number of mass production products.

Customers are provided with basic product and a range of features that they can add or subtract to get a unique product.

There are fewer chances of loss in mass customization as the customer pays before they can ask for the customization to be made. Below are some other disadvantages.

1. Tiring process of figuring out what customer wants.
2. The constant process of thinking about creative and innovative ideas to please customers.
3. Keeping and maintaining stock of the variety of material.
4. Tiring process of convincing customers for the higher price charged.
5. Difficult to get the estimate for product demand.
6. Need for highly flexible production technology and machinery.
7. Expenses of maintaining direct customer relationship.

What Are The Types of Mass Customization?

1. Collaborative Customization:

This type of mass customization business idea is a little expensive for the customers. It is for those customers who want to create highly customized products. The meaning of collaborative customization is to create a customized product with the collaboration of clients.

In this method, customizers talk with the client to understand their needs and then use the information obtained from the client to create a product that they desired.

This type of mass customization is suitable for clients who are confused with the range of options and who don’t exactly know how they want their product.

The customizers help them by narrowing down their options and create a unique product for which fulfill their requirements. This type of mass customization is preferred by people who ant highly customized products and don’t have a budget limit.

2. Adaptive Customization:

In adaptive customization, products are not built from scratch as per the guidelines provided by the customers. But the basic product is prepared through mass production, and customers are given choice of a variety of features that they can add to the basic product make it unique.

This type of mass customization easy to make the part of the existing business style. Only small changes are required to be made in the production process to provide customized services to customers.

As the base product is made through mass production, the cost of a customized product is not high, and people of all class can afford it. For example, an online company The messy corners sell wallet, purse, travel bags, passport cover, etc.

They mass-produced these products in different color and design and provided a range of options for tags, title, name, etc. to be carved on the products to make it customized.

Customers can select the product that they want to buy and select the customized from the drop-down menu provided on the website to select different features that they want to be carved on the product at a small additional price.

Adaptive customization is best to fit the mass customization business idea for online businesses.

3. Cosmetic Customization:

Cosmetic customization is a type of mass customization where standard products are sold in different ways to a different group of customers. With the increasing demand of customers for customized products, more and more companies are opting for cosmetic customization.

Now the companies sell standard products but in different sizes, shapes, containers, or packaging so that the needs of customers can be fulfilled.

Products produced through cosmetic customization usually carry the name of customers. For example, a recent trend of cosmetic customization is seen in the apparel industry, where people spend billions of dollars to buy customized clothing such as a t-shirt and sweatshirts, etc.

One more example from the apparel industry is the introduction of the plus-sized clothing line. Earlier apparel companies used to sell clothes of small, medium or large sizes but nowadays, companies are selling clothes of various plus sizes and even get customized ready clothes as per the unique requirements of the customers.

Even the impact of cosmetic customization is also seen in the retail industry. Retailers are opting the cosmetic customization method to provide customized product to their clients.

For example, a baker not only sells cakes made through standard design and ingredients but have started selling cakes made as per the unique theme told by the client and they also use different ingredients to prepare customized cakes for customers with different health conditions.

4. Transparent Customization:

The transparent customization is a quite new and unique type of mass customization. In transparent customization, companies customized ready products for customers by constantly analyzing their behavior.

This method of mass customization is not very popular among the companies as it requires a lot of additional work and efforts to learn about the customers’ buying behavior and their needs and choices.

However, if implemented properly, this method can be a successful strategy to gain the loyalty of customers and boost sales incredibly by putting a few extra efforts.

Can You Customize Website on Shopify?

When you start the process of opening a Shopify store, you will be asked to choose a theme. You can choose a free theme or a paid one, what you should know is that the theme will be general and designed for a fake store. You will have to take the elements of that theme and manipulate them to match your own branding. This can be as simple or complex as you choose.

You undoubtedly want a professional store that makes visitors want to spend their money on your products. With this in mind, it’s important to spend some time on customization, here are the best ways to customize your Shopify website.

Purchase a great theme

The reason why so many brands flock to Shopify for their ecommerce platform is the library of professionally designed themes. On top of being an incredibly easy platform to use even for the most “un techy” person, Shopify’s experts provide beautifully designed themes that are optimized to facilitate sales.

If you’re new to web design, a theme is what controls the ‘layout and appearance’ of any website.  On Shopify, their template language is Liquid, this is important for the next point. If you do choose to hire an expert to handle your Shopify theme customization, you’ll want to make sure their fluent in this coding language and structure.

Customizing your Shopify theme

Once you have downloaded your theme you simply need to navigate to your Online Store>Themes>Customize Theme in order to start the customization process. Each theme will allow you to customize certain types of pages, settings and items like your font, colouring and photography. There will be some elements that you want changed that will not be possible without editing the HTML or CSS of the coding. 

Hire a Shopify developer to customize your Shopify website  

Hiring a Shopify expert is really the best way to customize your theme. With their help you can ensure that your store has the aesthetic and functionality that you need, while you focus on building your business and your strategy. There are a couple options here.

First you should choose a theme and hire a designer to translate your brand into the aspects of the theme. Once you are happy with the look of the home, interior and product pages you can hand that design over to a Shopify developer.

Then the customization work begins and soon you’ll have a home your products deserve.

What is Customization Explain With an Example?

Customization is done by the user. Users are asked to identify their preferences and they are then shown things that they prefer. For example, when customers sign up for Netflix, the service asks users to select a few shows they like and then displays a list of options based on those choices. Then, Netflix customizes the user’s account based on the identified preferences.

On other platforms, another example of customization happens when you click the “hide ad” option for Facebook ads or Google Display Network ads.

When you click to hide ads on display ads, Google sends you to a page where you can select your ad preferences, customizing what kind of ads you see while you browse websites:

Similarly, when you hide a Facebook ad, the social network provides a list of reasons why you hid the ad. Then asks you to set your ad preferences — customizing future ads for you:

Customization enhances user experience because it allows users to control what they see. This makes them inclined to respond positively to the ads they see later.

What Are Some Examples of Mass customization?

There are many companies which have opted mass customization to take their business one step ahead. In this section, you will learn about a few examples of companies who have taken mass customization abroad.

1. Nikeid:

One popular example of a successful business which has implemented mass customization successfully and made a profit from it is the sports shoe company Nike under the brand name NikeID.

The custom made sports shoes of NikeID cost just 20% more than the shoes made from mass production. Customers can get their name and photo printed on the shoes to get personalized shoes.

2. Dell computers:

Dell computers company is one of the oldest and popular examples of mass customization. Dell company started it’s with the concept of mass customization. You can choose the components that you want to include in your computer and get your computer assembled as you want.

3. The messy corner:

The messy corner is an Indian Maharashtra based company. This company works on the adaptive mass customization concept and sell customized designed products like wallets, passport covers, handbags, key chains, and name tag, etc.

This company is becoming popular because it’s easy to choose features and affordable prices.

How Much Can You Customize Shopify?

Even with a shiny new Shopify theme and a handful of apps, your store might be lacking something. From font size to footer styling adjustments, hover animation to header transmigration (okay, that last one is made up), customizing your Shopify theme can be the extra step needed to outshine your competition.

Customizations range in complexity. Some can be applied by anyone with enough time and patience, while most require a skilled professional. You’ll want to be careful and do your research before diving into the code. A wrong move can have serious implications and create a ripple effect that causes problems for your store.

Your Shopify admin holds a maximum of 20 themes at once, but this capacity is often left unused by merchants. It’s a common misconception that having more than the one published theme can be burdensome to a store’s page load speed.

While page speed is an important concern, having extra themes and theme duplicates in your store does not inhibit loading or contribute to issues with customer experience. In fact, maintaining a habit of duplicating your theme before making changes (ie. adding a new app, modifying CSS, etc.) can ease troubleshooting if page speed issues occur later on.

You can duplicate your theme by going to Actions > Duplicate

You can also add informative titles to your themes to keep track of backups. The “Rename” feature allows up to 50 characters to provide supplementary information about the theme backup, such as date, version/release, and what customization it precedes.

e.g. Reach v2.0.0 (July/18) before Alt Product Template

That being said, duplicates only really need to be made following significant changes to your theme files. While 20 may sound like a lot of theme versions, it can run out quickly if you’re making a duplicate after every font colour adjustment!

Can I Code in Shopify?

You can edit your theme code to make detailed changes to your online store. Most of the files that make up a theme contain Liquid, Shopify’s templating language. Theme files also contain HTML, CSS, JSON, and JavaScript. Edit the code for a theme only if you know HTML and CSS, and have a basic understanding of Liquid.

Read Also: What Does Personalization Mean for Customers?

If you edit your theme’s code, then you might make it ineligible for automatic upgrades. You should only edit your theme’s code if you can’t make the changes that you need using an HTML or Liquid setting or a Shopify app.

Final Words

The key to customization is relevance.

Shopify sellers that use personal data to understand their audience and create relevant campaigns are likely to be rewarded with:

• Reduced acquisition costs
• Lower ad spend
• Higher sales
• Higher customer lifetime value.

Now it’s time to start gathering data and put it to use for your personalized eCommerce campaign.