Personalization Audit: Alo Yoga

Alo Yoga is beloved by fitness enthusiasts for their attention to design and high performance activewear. But is the brand equally beloved for their personalized shopping experience?

Every LimeSpot Personalization Audit we conduct involves rigorous testing of the pre-purchase experience to see how brands on Shopify are adapting to a customer's preferences and buying signals in real time. Learn more about our methodology here, or keep reading to see whether Alo Yoga is as flexible as their customers.

Alo Yoga personalization strategy audit

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The premise is really in the name: Alo Yoga. Or at least it was, when this active lifestyle brand kicked off in 2007. Alo Yoga is one of the pioneers of the 'athleisure' trend, creating pieces that are cute enough to wear to and from class (and maybe even for a smoothie break along the way), but functional enough to get you through any workout.

While Alo Yoga may be the brand's official name, they more often go by Alo to reflect the wide range of activities their shoppers take on - and the expanded range of products Alo has released since their earliest days of bra tops and yoga pants. Today, Alo's lineup includes loungewear, a men's line, fitness gear, and even a beauty and wellness line centered around aromatherapy.

Alo Yoga isn't the first activewear brand we've audited, and our advice on where personalization efforts should be focused for a fitness gear brand remains the same: Tailoring the experience to a customer's clear preferences (whether that be color, style, activity, or gender), and cross-selling items that are meant to be paired together to drive bigger basket sizes. So how is Alo Yoga doing? And how does it compare to the last activewear brand we looked at, Gymshark?

What Alo Yoga got right

• Get the look cross-sells: Alo sells many items that belong to a matching set. Their callout to 'get the look' is bold and in your face, making it easy for shoppers to get the exact head to toe style as the product they're browsing. While the callout might not exist on every page, it's effective when used. One improvement? Letting shoppers quick add an item to cart without having to navigate to a new product detail page. Alternatively the brand could also let you build a bundle on the page.

• Add to cart cross-sells: On a similar note, Alo also does a great job at cross-selling products once an item is added to cart, by providing a modal pop-up that invites you to complete a look that 'pairs great with'. Ideally these callouts should enable a shopper to quick add to cart, but at present, you have to click into a new product detail page to add.

• Cart page: Alo has one of the better cart pages of all the brands we've audited so far, for a few reasons. For one, they include a prominent upsell promotion right at the top of the cart, inviting customers to shop more to earn a free gift. To make it easy for shoppers to top up their orders, they've got a collection of affordable cross-sells that feel like easy 'impulse buys' to help reach the GWP target.

Areas for Alo Yoga to enhance

• Product detail page (PDP) recommendations: The product recommendations strategy on Alo's site is a little inconsistent. On some pages, the 'Similar items' recommendations block brings up products that seem to be in the same color, but aren't at all similar to the item being viewed (e.g. a scrunchie or socks being presented as 'similar to' a sports bra). On others however, it's more successful, with a range of bottoms (i.e. shorts, skirts, or other leggings) presented in a similar colorway to a pair of leggings that's being viewed. It's worth noting that Alo doesn't employ all recommendation blocks on every page. One PDP featured a 'You may also like' block as well, while another just stuck to 'Similar items'. On a men's product detail page, the style inspiration and 'You may also like' items that were surfaced were all women's items, while on another, there was just a single item presented in the same block. This suggests Alo may need to do an audit of whether their recommendation blocks are serving up the ideal content.

• Home page blocks: At first glance, Alo seems to have a decent amount of personalization on their home page, with 3 different blocks that appear as product recommendations: 'Need. Now.', 'Just dropped', and 'Bestseller alert'. While the blocks give the effect of directing customers to specific product detail pages and not just collection pages, they don't appear to update to reflect a customer's actual preferences. It would be wise of Alo to have products draw from specific collections but use smart recommendation algorithms to promote products that are most likely to catch a customer's eye based on their past site behavior.

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Missed personalization opportunities for

Alo Yoga

• Site customization: Alo has two major opportunities to tailor their site by interest. First, if a shopper is consistently only shopping or browsing in the men's department, they could change the home page content and navigation order to help men feel more 'at home' and get to their desired category more quickly. Secondly, Alo has specific collections geared toward different activities. If a customer is showing a preference toward a specific sport, the site's hero imagery or featured collections could also be adjusted to reflect that activity.
• Checkout: Alo could take their cross-sells and embed them at checkout. Even if a customer is more likely to convert on the cart page (based on the free gift incentive), adding cross-sells at checkout is a simple way for them to drive higher AOV by presenting items a shopper may have missed, particularly if they're laser focused on a specific product.
• Recent Views: Much like another brand we looked at, Bombas, Alo should highlight products customers have recently viewed as a best practice, to make it easier for them to navigate the site. As yet another business with relatively similar SKUs, this feels like a major missed opportunity to make the browsing experience easier for shoppers.
  
  

Conclusion

Overall Alo Yoga's strong suit when it comes to personalization is all taking place on their product detail pages. Which is great when it comes to driving conversions or boosting basket sizes. But the brand could definitely step things up earlier in the funnel to drive more people to the point of converting, whether it's by personalizing the home page, optimizing collections, or simply basing personalization on more than just what product a customer is eyeballing.

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