It’s not exactly a secret that the technology underpinning e-tail product recommendations has been progressing in leaps and bounds over recent years.
We are in an age of ever-more prominent and sophisticated machine learning and generative artificial intelligence (AI). As of 2025, it seems there is barely a search engine, app, or online editor that doesn’t embrace such technology in one way or another.
But with so many product recommendations that appear on today’s ecommerce shopfronts being AI-personalised and manipulated, many online marketers have found themselves asking: have personalisation and cross-selling effectively merged with each other?
Let’s remind ourselves what ecommerce cross-selling and personalisation are
Machine learning and AI have become such fundamental parts of the ecommerce “furniture”, that one might almost forget how recently they have begun reshaping the e-tail world.
But to explore the real differences that still exist between cross-selling and personalisation, let’s revisit how these two terms have traditionally been defined:
- Ecommerce cross-selling
This is a merchandising technique, whereby a given online store presents shoppers with complementary items as they make their way around the shopfront.
A relatively obvious example of ecommerce cross-selling would be laptop cases being suggested to someone who is clearly taking an interest in laptop computers.
The aim behind cross-selling for the merchant, is to heighten the average order value by encouraging shoppers to purchase more in a single transaction.
- Ecommerce personalisation
This term refers to adjusting the shopping experience to suit a particular customer. It draws upon the individual shopper’s distinctive preferences, past behaviour, and data to help achieve this.
The personalisation process uses data collection and analysis – and in more recent times, algorithms and AI – to gain an understanding of the preferences, needs, and behaviour patterns of each customer.
The principle behind e-tail personalisation is that it helps a customer feel understood and valued. This, in turn, helps increase the likelihood of the given customer buying again and again from the same store, thereby delivering a higher lifetime value.
How, then, do e-tail cross-selling and personalisation meaningfully differ?
It is understandable that these days, cross-selling and personalisation can sometimes be treated as if they were the same. After all, both techniques do depend on analytics, even if it is personalisation that is associated with a particularly deep level of analysis.
Furthermore, cross-selling can be considered a form of personalisation when individual user data is used to power product recommendations.
There are, however, various arguments as to how the two terms differ:
- They differ in how their success tends to be measured
In the case of cross-selling, it is the impact on average order size that largely dictates its perceived success or failure.
By contrast, when ecommerce marketers are seeking to measure the success of personalisation over time, they often look to such metrics as repeat purchase rates, customer retention rates, and lifetime value.
- They differ in how ‘transactional’ they arguably are
Even amid the blurring of the lines between cross-selling and personalisation that the AI revolution has helped accelerate, it could be argued that cross-selling is the more “transactional” of the two.
With cross-selling, the emphasis tends to be on boosting the immediate value of a single purchase. Personalisation, on the other hand, is frequently talked about and implemented in the interests of cultivating a longer-term relationship with the customer.
- They differ in their comprehensiveness
To pick up on what we stated above, cross-selling tends to be perceived as a point-of-sale strategy.
Personalisation, on the other hand, can be seen as a more comprehensive approach, influencing every point of interaction between the given online store and a customer.
One more thing about the AI boom…
Remember that whatever your own perceptions may be of the similarities or differences between personalisation and cross-selling, there will always be an art to ecommerce marketing – not just a science.
So, you should not be allowing AI to completely take over your business’s on-site merchandising. After all, if the day eventually comes when every ecommerce shopfront depends entirely on AI for personalisation, there will no longer be a competitive advantage from personalisation.
This underscores the importance of preserving the human touch, and understanding the nuances of how cross-selling and personalised product recommendations vary.
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