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These days, website personalization has become a must for those seeking to win online users’ hearts and stay ahead of the competition. Gone are the days when only a good website design and high-quality content regularly published were enough to engage visitors.
With millions of websites out there, you need to create the best experience for your visitors to stand out from the crowd. Doing Website personalization properly is one of the best ways to captivate web users and personalize their experience.
This blog post will discuss everything you must know about website personalization to get the best results. Moreover, if you’re too busy to read the whole blog and looking for a way to understand your website visitors, WatchThemLive can be a good option to pave the way for providing a better user experience and increasing conversions.
So, let’s waste no more time and get started.
What Is Website Personalization
According to the available data, 89% of businesses are investing in customizing their sites. Website personalization is the practice of creating a unique experience for each visitor based on their needs and behavior. Marketers personalize visitors’ experiences through behavioral analytics and identifying user segments.
The overwhelming amount of information available today has made web personalization even more valuable. This way, visitors will only see relevant information, which provides a more convenient experience.
What Is Web Content Personalization
As mentioned above, website personalization refers to the process of creating a customized experience for visitors to a website instead of a broad experience for every user. This way, you can make your customers’ experience unique based on their needs and preferences. And increase your conversions.
According to statistics, 32% of customers would stop purchasing from the brands they love after one bad experience. So, you should never stop trying to provide an excellent personalized experience for your customers because bad experiences are driving customers away—faster than you think.
Content personalization is a strategy that uses visitors’ data to provide relevant content, and it is supposed to increase user satisfaction and lead to more conversions.
Why Is Website Personalization Important
In this era, website personalization enables businesses to capture their target market’s attention more easily. Offering a customized experience shows you care about your audience. So they will become more interested in your brand and spend more time on your website.
Besides, users are expecting personalized experiences while they are browsing the web. In fact, 74 percent of customers get frustrated when they visit a website that doesn’t provide personalized content.
Benefits of Website Personalization
Let’s take a look at some of the advantages it offers:
1- Higher Conversion Rate
Web personalization is a key strategy for creating a better user experience; when you fulfill your visitors’ needs, they will be more willing to follow the path to conversion. Therefore you can increase your conversion rate in no time.
On top of that, personalization can help you provide your users with more relevant content, and keep them on your website for longer. By displaying content, products, or services that matter to your audience, you will gain their loyalty, and your retention rate will increase.
2- Higher Converting Landing Pages
There are certain touch points of the user experience that should be personalized. And the landing page is one of the important ones. E-commerce and SaaS businesses should pay careful attention to landing pages since well-optimized and personalized landing pages can bring about huge revenue.
And a considerable number of customers will be influenced by the personalized product recommendations on the homepage and landing pages.
3- More Qualified Leads
Tailored content will cause more qualified leads to enter your conversion funnel. Personalization is one of the most effective strategies to improve your lead quality. These leads are more likely to convert than untargeted ones.
4- Higher User Engagement
Offering a personalized experience will increase visitors’ interactions with your website. Also, the average time spent on your website will improve by providing users with what they are looking for, which is one of the crucial website metrics that you should track to increase conversions and measure engagement.
5- Improved Customer Loyalty
It is a proven fact that people spend more time with those who treat them right. This is the same for businesses and website personalization; we normally value high-caliber services and a warm and welcoming site experience that is individualized for us. We all know that the websites that take personalization more seriously are more likely to have loyal customers. Based on research, 79% of customers consider purchasing from brands that care about them.
6- Better Customer Understanding
Website personalization can assist you in sorting customers into personalized funnels. For example, CTAs can encourage visitors to tell you about their occupation and its details. Afterward, according to the visitors’ responses, you can segment your audience to display different versions of the website. This is a perfect way of creating better lead qualification systems that will increase your conversion rate.
7- Smarter Follow-Up Emails
For years, a relatively known way of advertising has been email marketing. But there’s a problem! When people receive the huge number of emails, they are more likely to filter them into the trash or spam folders. So, how can you avoid this issue?
Well, the simplest way is to respectively send less of them and make them more personalized. Typically, customers would appreciate receiving a few informative and personalized emails. Why not do your customers a favor and let them meet this simple need?
Personalize your emails for the sake of your customers and your own ease. Personalization lets you sort your visitors into different categories and send them more relevant follow-up emails.
8- Lower Bounce Rate
Sometimes, a high bounce rate means that your website doesn’t resonate with your visitors. Website personalization helps you reduce your bounce rate up to 30 percent. Also, keep in mind that a lower bounce rate will help you improve your search engine ranking, which increases your visibility.
Types of Website Personalization
Are you wondering what method you can use to customize your website? Here are the two main types of website personalization:
1- Explicit Website Personalization
Explicit personalization is when you customize your website based on the information visitors give you. In this type of website personalization, when a user visits your website for the first time, they choose a set of preferences that are saved in cookies. Then, every time the user comes back to your website, they see the same content.
2- Implicit Website Personalization
This process can be done in contextual or behavioral form. Behavioral personalization is based on visitors’ browsing history and interactions with your website’s content. A good example is Amazon’s product recommendations which provide you with some options based on your previous purchase.
On the other hand, contextual personalization is based on users’ context. For example, the context can include users’ location, device type, profile information, etc.
How to Personalize Your Website
Below, you can find how to get started with website personalization:
1- Identifying Your Target Audience
The first step to personalize your website is understanding your target market. Knowing your audience will help you find out what you should exactly do.
First of all, see who your current customer base is to gain a picture of your audience. Then, see who is buying each of your products and services and which ones are attracting more customers. Finally, understand your most important customers and segment them to identify your target market more quickly.
2- Understanding Your Visitors’ Intent
After identifying your target market, you should determine why they visit your website and what they want. This way, you will recommend the right products or services. There are three approaches to understanding your visitors’ intent:
1- Find out what keywords people use to find your website. These keywords help you provide them with more relevant content that is closest to their search.
2- You can track visitors’ browsing history and behavior on your website to figure out what they are interested in.
3- You can ask for some personal information whenever someone lands on your website and personalize their experience based on their preferences.
3- Developing Website Personalization Strategies
Now, you have to design strategies about how you want to personalize your visitors’ experiences. First, think about the content you want to show and encourage them to explore your website and take action. For each target audience, display products or services relevant to their industry, location, etc.
Additionally, identify the areas you want to personalize in order to attract your target audience. For example, you can show recommended products on the checkout page to bring in more revenue. Let’s look at the article below to get inspired.
Read more: Checkout page design examples
4- Personalizing the Experience
It’s necessary to create the best experience for each visitor as they may become leads that will convert. So let’s take a look at the most critical factors that you should consider when personalizing your website:
1- Location
You can use visitors’ locations to customize their experience in many ways. For example, you can show visitors only available products in specific areas on your eCommerce store. You can also display different shipping information based on the users’ locations.
2- User Behavior
Website visitor tracking enables you to understand users’ behavior and their needs. Find out how they engage with your website, what paths they follow, what they do, and what makes them leave your website.
With this information, you can engage visitors more effectively and encourage them to complete your desired action.
3- Demographics
Using demographic information such as age, gender, education, etc., will help you take your website personalization to the next level —segment visitors based on this data to display more relevant products or services.
4- Psychographic Segmentation
Psychographics segmentation enables you to take a deeper dive into user behavior. You will be able to personalize your website based on visitors’ interests, personalities, values, etc. Paying attention to your customers’ psychological characteristics will keep them coming back.
An excellent example of a website that uses psychographics for website personalization is Klook. This travel platform provides different experiences depending on why each visitor wants to travel. Also, they have added the activities that travelers can do at a particular destination as customers travel based on what they can do there.
Website Personalization Best Practices
The ever-changing needs of customers have made website personalization a challenging task. Therefore, it’s essential to constantly test your strategies and develop new ideas to keep up with your customers and offer the best experience.
Here are some of the best practices to personalize your website more effectively:
1- Use Real-Time Data
The data you collect while visitors are active on your website allows you to present the right message, recommendation, or content at the right time. It’s a great strategy to re-engage visitors’ before they decide to abandon your website.
A great example of real-time data is when eCommerce websites try to cross-sell or upsell buyers. Below you can see a sample from J. Crew. Whenever a customer chooses a product, it displays a set of items that match the selected clothing, encouraging them to spend more.
2- Don’t Overdo Personalization
Personalization tells your audience that they are important to you; however, too much of it can seem creepy. Also, sometimes showing the same content over and over again might annoy the visitors, making them leave your website.
3- Understand When Personalization Is Effective
You should determine when delivering a personalized message is appropriate. Analyze your target audience and decide when is the right moment to display relevant content.
4- Test Your Website Personalization Ideas
Not all your strategies are going to work out. So, A/B test all your ideas before putting them into action. Then, measure the results and figure out whether you should implement these strategies or not and how you can improve them.
5- Monitor Your Website’s Analytics
It’s essential to measure the success of your website personalization strategies. Use a behavior analytics tool to understand how they are performing and get insights into how to optimize them.
6- Use the Best Website Analytics Tools
It may be beneficial to look into the various website analytics tools out there, as they have many amazing features that can help improve traffic and conversion rates while providing an excellent user experience.
WatchThemLive is one of the best CRO tools that you can use to track user activity on your website. Understanding user behavior is key to personalizing your website, and this tool offers many advantages that can help you make necessary changes and lower your customer acquisition costs. For example, with features like heatmaps and session replays, you can collect accurate qualitative data about visitors’ interactions with your website and succeed in online marketing.
Heatmaps
By using the heat mapping feature, you can monitor user’s activity, including what they click on and how further down your page they scroll. Heatmaps can come in handy for running more effective A/B tests on your personalized landing pages. Set up heatmaps on different versions of your landing pages and see what elements have the most impact on your conversion rate. This helps you design an optimized, high-converting version of your landing page.
Session Replays
The session replay feature allows you to understand visitors’ experience on your website exactly as it is. Watching session recordings, you can track the path each user takes on your website and understand what interests them, and what makes them abandon your website.
Use this data along with website analytics to discover how to reduce the bounce rate and keep visitors on your website for a longer time. You can also measure the effectiveness of your website personalization efforts and see how visitors are interacting with the personalized elements.
Goal Tracking
If you’re looking for a way to A/B test your strategies to figure out what works for your specific context, use WatchThemLive’s conversion tracking tool to set goals to measure your marketing performance.
Console Recording
Moreover, WatchThemLive’s session replays enable you to identify Javascript errors in your user’s browser with the help of console recording. So, your Dev team can easily fix them in no time.
Visual Live Chat
We understand that using live chat is a great way to instantly connect with customers, however, there may be times when it is necessary to monitor their journeys if they have difficulty. We at WatchThemLive would like to bring to your attention our feature, which allows you to integrate a live chat with session recording; this means that while engaging in real time conversations with potential customers, you can analyze their paths and see any challenges.
Sign up to WatchThemLive now and get started!
6- Utilize Customer Data to Create Content Funnels
Customer data platforms (CDPs) can simply connect website engagement to content funnels. An easy way to leverage user data to create content funnels is with the “related content” section. to You can recommend some other similar blog posts, but exclude the posts that the visitor has read.
If you have interesting content on your website, visitors will stay longer, and it can help them build a personal relationship with your brand. The key to building strong customer relationships, no matter the size of your business, is to engage your customers and satisfy them with your products and services. A recommended content section can improve personalization, and depending on what part of the funnel the content associates with, you can use it to progress potential customers and prospects toward conversion.
7- Create Clickable Links for Each Value Proposition
Having customers with different needs requires different clickable links for each of your value propositions on the same web page or campaign. What makes you different from your competitors is being unique and persuasive.
A variety of clickable links will lead the customer to the solution they are looking for in the shortest time, and it saves their time. This way, you will personalize your website for different segments of your audience.
8- Update Your Strategies Regularly
A website strategy that works today may not work tomorrow. Therefore, you need to constantly analyze your audience’s behavior and needs and see how they change to optimize your efforts.
9- Include a Privacy Statement
As website personalization involves collecting user data, you must inform visitors about why you are gathering information and how you are using it. By adding a privacy statement, you can assure users their data is safe and won’t be misused.
A Simple Website Personalization Strategy
Here are some practical tips that you can use to guarantee your success.
- Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need all available information to personalize your website in a meaningful way.
- Personalization is a long trip, and you should take it step by step. You can begin by analyzing your audience data in depth.
- You can collect user data and signals with the help of algorithms.
- People’s tastes change over time. So, it’s necessary to consistently improve web personalization strategies in order to ensure maximum success in the future.
FAQs on Website Personalization
Now, it’s time to answer some of your frequently asked questions.
Q1: How Do I Create a Website Personalization?
In order to create a personalized website, there are six customization options for your marketing site that can be tailored:
- Headlines and heroes,
- CTAs,
- Customer testimonials,
- Product or plan features,
- Logos,
- Featured blog posts.
Q2: What Are the Five Elements of a Good Website Design?
It is essential to take into account the five basic elements of web design when developing a website, as each component plays an important role in creating a positive user experience:
- Content,
- Usability,
- Aesthetics,
- Visibility,
- Interaction.
Conclusion
Today, online users expect website personalization as it offers a better experience. Therefore, websites that don’t create customized experiences will definitely fall behind the competition.
Try to obtain a deep and comprehensive understanding of your audience to get the best results from personalization. An excellent way to achieve this understanding is by using a behavior analytics tool like WatchThemLive. Sign up now and master website personalization!
