Crafting Seamless Experiences: The Art of Invisible Personalisation in Digital Retail
When we talk about personalisation in digital, we often jump straight to the flashy stuff: promo pop-ups, discount codes, and email capture. But personalisation doesn't need to be loud to be effective. The best personalisation is often invisible. It's supportive or subtle in a way that guides the customer, not distracts them from their intent.
Invisibility
Before I got into User Experience design, I worked in visual effects for film and animation. There were two kinds of VFX we'd do. One was the kind everyone notices - explosions, crashes, giant CGI monsters. The other kind was invisible. Replacing modern street signs in period dramas. Removing cars from scenes set in the 1800s. Things you'd never notice, but without them, the whole scene would fall apart. We wouldn't be creating a world for the story without this kind of effects.
This invisible work taught me a lot about believability, context and care. It was about helping the story feel more real - without showing off. I think I'm starting to think about personalisation in the same way.
Personable service
Imagine walking into an excellent shop. The layout doesn't shift just because you've walked in. The jeans aren't suddenly in a different corner. But the experience does feel personal. The shop assistants are helpful at the right moments, passionate about the shopping experience, knowledgeable about their stock, and able to ask the right questions and point you in the right direction. Maybe they even bring you a few suggestions that just make sense. They also know when to back off and leave you to it.
They're not rewriting the shop. They're helping you get more out of it.
By providing a seamless and personalised shopping experience, digital retailers cannot only match but surpass the service offered by independent brick-and-mortar stores. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately, higher sales. Digital retail can do the same. We are falling short compared to independent brick-and-mortar stores. Take Pegg & Sons, a small menswear retailer in Brighton. They create incredible, captivating content about their stock. It is helpful and interesting and creates a desire for the products. Here's the catch. All this stock can also be bought in much bigger online retailers like END Clothing or Mr Porter. But the experience Pegg & Sons has created means customers want to shop from them because they have gotten a better experience. They have learnt something interesting or been guided in the right way.
When I hear people talk about personalisation, I hear that every customer can get a completely different product page. This scares me. We shouldn't be trying to redesign the whole page per person. That breaks mental models and conventions. It's jarring. Instead, we should be designing invisible layers, contextual helpers, little nudges, and helpful information that surface based on what a customer is trying to do.
Recommendations
Recommendations have become the go-to for personalisation. But that's a narrow view of what personalisation can be. What about showing free delivery messaging when a customer's clearly weighing up cost? Or surfacing your price match promise when someone's hopping between competitors? Or highlight your recycling scheme when someone adds a large appliance to their basket?
These aren't pop-ups. They're not fireworks. They're not shouting. They could be the right driver at the right moment.
And more importantly, they're useful. Personalisation can be the tool that delivers these.
According to the Intent Gap report by Made With Intent, 76% of online shoppers say receiving the right information at the right time would improve their experience and make them more likely to shop on a site again, while 46% feel overwhelmed by the amount of information on retail websites.
You can access the full report here: The Intent Gap Report by Made With Intent.
Intent not personas
Intent is hard. It's fluffy, emotional, and fluid. Most of the time, we design for personas and hope it works out. It's a much simpler version of designing for intent. We put an experience out to everyone and hope it serves that persona but doesn't negatively affect others. However, intent and being specific about servicing a particular intent in a customer segment aredynamic, and they change as the customer moves through their journey. It is potentially a much better way of doing things.
Take Cubitts, for example. When I'm browsing, I get tools that help me explore with virtual try-ons, clear sizing, andsimple filters. The site goes out of its way to help me analyse and try on glasses. When I'm buying, everything gets specific delivery options, clean checkout, quick payment, and getting your prescription right. It all shifts in feel but not in structure. It's like an excellent shop assistant changing how they help based on where you are in the journey.
That's the aim. Understand where someone is in their flow, then add just the right kind of help.
Supporting
Personalisation should be the best sidekick in your story. It shouldn't try to steal the spotlight. It should support, guide, reassure and maybe even delight but never distract.
Like any good sidekick, it should be replaceable. You should be able to swap in different personalised messages for different cohorts without breaking the structure.
Designing for journeys, not just pages, is key. A message on a product page might work brilliantly when someone's researching but be completely irrelevant once they're in the checkout. Intent will help us know where experiences make sense.
Using the 60/30/10 rule for personalisation
Striking the right balance: the 60/30/10 rule for personalisation in digital retail.
60% Core experience
This is your foundation, the stuff every customer sees. It's consistent, familiar, and frictionless. Navigation, layout, clear copy, accessible components. The experience should just work. No tricks, no surprises. Just solid design. If we optimised this experience we could have a very personable and sucessful website with it being personalised.
30% Segment-specific experiences
This layer adds relevance based on broad customer types. Finance customers. Members. First-time shoppers. People who browse differently or come in with different jobs to be done. Here, we show helpful differences like finance options, loyalty rewards, or service upgrades. It's personalisation that's visible but not jarring. It flexes the experience without rewriting it. its a 1 to many experiences. But now we can start to get better performance from teh core expereince.
10% Contextual, moment-based enhancements
The final layer. The smallest, but arguably most innovative. These are the real-time nudges, subtle prompts based on intent, behaviours, or needs. Think: a message about delivery cut-off times when someone is hesitating, or reminding them of your recycling promise when buying a large appliance. It's micro-personalisation that feels thoughtful, not forced.
Together, this structure balances the consistency of the overall experience with a specific context for the individual. Everyone gets a strong experience, segments feel understood, and individuals get just-in-time value. It's not jarring or defying convention. It's familiar. Every time they come back to our site, They get the same experience but different in subtle ways.
Feedback
Whether something's too visible or too hidden isn't about opinion - it's about outcomes. Run tests. Gather feedback. Usetools. Learn what works for different segments. Then keep evolving.
The invisible stuff should feel obvious to the user but only after it's helped them. If its not going to help them, why show it. We could have led with a different driver.
According to the Intent Gap report, 63% of online shoppers feel that e-commerce websites are inappropriate and/or manipulative, often due to tactics like pop-ups or urgent messaging. Meanwhile, only 21% of users find early pop-ups helpful, and 19% say it would make them stop shopping altogether.
The future
I don't think the core structure of digital shopping will disappear any time soon. Homepages, lister pages, product pages, checkout, they'll all stick around. But personalisation can help make those core experiences better for more people.
Without it, you're designing one experience for everyone. And that can still be great. But with it - done well - you start creating thoughtful, adaptive layers. Layers that help specific customers, in specific moments, do what they came to do.
That, to me, is where the magic is. Less fireworks. More finesse.
Sources:
*The Intent Gap Report, Made With Intent, 2025: *madewithintent.ai/the-intent-gap-report
*The Person in Personalisation by David Mannheim: *amazon.co.uk link