Personalization Audit: Princess Polly

Aussie brand Princess Polly has fast become one of the biggest fashion brands on Shopify. In this edition of our LimeSpot Personalization Audits, we're giving this brand from Down Under a real once-over to see if they're mastering personalization, or where their shopping experience could be improved.

Let's take a closer look at Princess Polly's personalization prowess!

Princess Polly personalization strategy audit

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Fashion trends come and go, but in today's uber connected world, Aussie brand Princess Polly has managed to keep up with what's #trending in practically real time. With offices in Hollywood and Australia, this socially savvy Shopify brand stays on top of whatever styles are going viral; spinning online trends into shoppable looks for pure branding gold.

Princess Polly wears its 'fast fashion' branding proudly; ripping looks from the 'gram and TikTok and dropping new styles daily to help customers keep up with the Kardashians (or whatever celebrity muse they're following that week). But they're also conscious about the role fashion plays in the environment, so they've launched their own 'Earth Club' to offset the impact of keeping their shoppers in the latest trends.

The personalization goals for a brand like Princess Polly aren't too different from a brand like Fashion Nova. While the product count isn't quite as high for Princess Polly (1,000 to Fashion Nova's ~7,000), this isn't a simple SKU website with just a handful of product types. With everything from shirts and swimwear to shoes and accessories, it's entirely possible to build a head to toe look from Princess Polly's collections - if they're merchandized properly.

Really, Princess Polly should be aiming to help customers find the exact right products based on their tastes, and build out a look to boost cart sizes.

Let's dive in to see what Princess Polly is acing and where they could level up their personalization.

What Princess Polly got right

• Product detail page (PDP) recommendations: Princess Polly is one of the few sites we've audited that curates their 'Wear it with' recommendations with items that actually make sense to wear together to complete an outfit. Oftentimes the items in the main product hero shot were included in the cross-sell section, making it easy to curate an entire look as styled by the brand. The cross-sells are also placed high on the page, making them easy to access. Finally, Princess Polly includes two additional stacked blocks of recommendations further down the page; a 'We think you would love' block (which also appears on the home page), and recent views.

• Home page recommendations: There are not one, but three recommendation blocks on the home page, even for a net new customer, including 'New for you', 'We think you would love', and 'What's new'. The mix of alternating these blocks with Princess Polly's campaign features gives customers a more 'choose your own adventure' feeling as opposed to only being shown what the brand wants to promote.
  
  

Areas for Princess Polly to enhance

• Shopping bag: When a product is added to cart, cross-sells are presented that very much fit the model of 'small add-ons' mentioned elsewhere in this audit - accessories like scarves and jewelry are promoted. However, if a shopper actually gets to the /cart page (which isn't intrinsically part of a buyer journey as it can really only be found by hitting checkout and then selecting 'Back to cart'), the experience is more fully realized with the ability to view products that have been saved for later, a nod to recent views, and a 'customers who bought these also bought' block. A drawback about this last block however, is you can't actually add a product directly to your cart from the recommendation block - shoppers have to click into the product detail pages to shop (whereas recent views and in-cart cross-sells can be added instantly).
  

• Geographic recognition: Princess Polly includes a clear callout to the country a shopper is in, including whatever shipping promotions they have on offer. They could take this further by curating products based on climate; a shopper in Australia (where the brand is HQ'd) versus Canada would likely be looking at very different products in the month of December.

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Missed personalization opportunities for

Princess Polly

• Collections: Princess Polly has a relatively large product catalog. When you revisit a section you've already browsed, you are jumped right back to where you last visited. However, there is no additional product sorting beyond that. The brand could benefit from re-sorting products based on a customer's demographic - for example, a shopper that only browses black tops could be served primarily neutral-toned items at the top of the list. It also feels like a missed opportunity to include recently viewed products somewhere on the page.
• Checkout: Princess Polly is using a multi-page checkout that could be enhanced by offering cross-sells at checkout (not just the cart page).
• Search: The sort order search results for Princess Polly do not change based on a customer's browsing behavior, but between a vanilla (incognito) experience and a shopper with history, the product images do change. Princess Polly should take into account the products a customer has already viewed and try placing them at the top of a search, in case that's what a customer is trying to get to again. Alternatively, embedding a recent views block somewhere on the page could have a similar effect.
  
  

Conclusion

Princess Polly is doing a decent job of using personalization to boost AOV and provide a smooth shopping experience for their customers. Their home page and product detail pages are well-curated to blend both the brand's interests and the customer's preferences. Most of the strategies we'd recommend for Princess Polly are for a brand that's interested into diving into more advanced tactics like cross-selling at checkout.

One more idea that seems in line with Princess Polly's 'Earth Club' ethos is to curate an experience that's specifically geared to green-minded shoppers. If a shopper signals an interest in the brand's eco-friendliness, they could take care to:

• Reorganize the home page promotions to promote their sustainable practices
• Resort their collections to put eco-friendly products at the top
• Add in or swap out additional copy that speaks to a product's green qualities on the product pages
• Change out the hello bar promotional greeting to speak to their green policies

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