The 26-Point Checklist for Closing the Amazon Personalization Gap
2026-02-28 19:09 Diff

The following checklist will help you audit and determine how well you are stacking up to Amazon when it comes to delivering personalized customer experiences.

Personalization is a critical part of Amazon’s success.

In his 1997 letter to Amazon shareholders, Bezos wrote:

“Today, online commerce saves customers money and precious time. Tomorrow, through personalization, online commerce will accelerate the very process of discovery.”

To this end, Bezos has delivered. Amazon has entirely shifted the paradigm in which we shop and re-defined customer expectations, forcing companies of all sizes to raise their game and in many cases, come in at price points that are a little friendlier to the end user.

But in an increasingly commoditized world where Amazon can deliver goods in less than an hour, personalization has become the best way to build brand equity and win hearts and minds online.

Using the checklist below, discover the essential personalization strategies necessary to close the Amazon gap and deliver customer experiences that your customers actually enjoy.

And if you’re looking for more Amazon content, here’s our free book about Amazon, titled The Chronicles of a Personalization Giant,” an original research project detailing how the eCommerce titan is leveraging personalization to drive ROI across web, mobile, and email.

26 Questions to Help You Personalize Like Amazon

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Homepage Personalization

  • Does your website serve optimized content for unknown users based on device or location?
  • Does your homepage include recently viewed items for logged in users?
  • Do you offer personalized product recommendations in your homepage?
  • Does your website test different homepage messaging?
  • Do you recommend products that are currently most popular on the website?

Recommendations

  • Does your website serve recommendations in drop-down menus?
  • Do you include recommendation widgets for "customers who bought this item also bought"?
  • Do you recommend similar items to those in view on your product pages?
  • Do you include frequently bought together recommendations on product pages?
  • Do you serve recommendations in cart based on items frequently bought together with what the user has placed in the basket?
  • Do you recommend products that are currently most popular within the product category currently being viewed by a user?

Mobile Optimization

  • Is the user experience tailored for mobile or do you simply shrink the desktop experience using responsive design?
  • On mobile web, do you bring return visitors to context by displaying items visited in their most recent session?
  • If you have a mobile app, do you promote its use upon visitors accessing your site via mobile web?
  • Do your product pages prominently feature personalized recommendations on mobile?
  • Do you engage your mobile users with personalized push notifications to drive app engagement?

Behavioral Messaging

  • Does your website show low-in-stock messaging to drive urgency?
  • Does your website provide personalized messaging around free shipping based on the current value of a user’s cart?
  • On mobile, do you display notifications to try and incentivize / capture a user’s email address?
  • Do you leverage behavioral data to display custom or targeted promotions in real-time?

Email

  • Do you send triggered emails if a user has left items in his/her cart?
  • Do your emails contain product recommendations, rendered in real-time?
  • Do you send emails regarding important account or shipping updates?

Search

  • Do you support users while they search by returning smart results with every keystroke?
  • Do you enable users to fine-tune their search results with filtering options?

Miscellaneous/Omnichannel

  • Do your recommendations served on desktop reflect a user’s behavior on mobile?
  • Do items in cart transfer from all mobile properties to desktop when logged in?

Conclusion

Personalization is now table stakes in retail. By focusing on the 26 questions above, ensure you are on par with Amazon when it comes to delivering the best customer experience.

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