Last Updated on August 18, 2023
Digital transformation has markedly changed our world and everyday life in recent decades. Today it is hard to find a business that does not have a website or application to provide services and products to customers.
This approach makes services more accessible to customers since all actions: from getting acquainted with the product to placing an order and payment, can be done in a few clicks on a smartphone. However, a new challenge has appeared in front of the business – how to attract users’ attention to your website and increase the chance of conversion. And here, the website personalization solution is the best option to solve this challenge.
In addition to optimizing various elements of the website and creating unique pages that match the brand identity, personalization is designed to make the user experience more individual, enjoyable, and effective to resonate with visitors.
Let’s take a closer look at personalization, its importance, and what benefits it can bring to a business.
What Is Web Personalization
Personalization has become a trend in the last decade. Conceptually, it is a strategy to provide website visitors with a custom-made experience.
With this approach, the system considers past purchases, geography, user behavior, etc., to provide a one-on-one experience to visitors. The main tasks of personalization include:
- increasing customer satisfaction
- longer visit duration
- attracting a new audience
- improving conversion rates
- increasing brand awareness
Web personalization is one of the key elements when it comes to digital marketing, as the buying and user experience is often critical here.
Today, the architecture of web personalization is being built to dynamically respond to each customer’s unique needs to increase the relevance of their communications.
Therefore, the better the website personalization, the better you serve your customers, which leads to customer satisfaction with your service and your business growth.
Benefits Of Web Personalization
Web personalization is an effective strategy for user interaction. That is, it is not just a feature of the website to improve its appearance. The reason lies in the fact that it is important for the customer how the business treats them. Therefore, companies that adapt to the individual customer experience have higher visitor-to-buyer conversion rates.
Website visitors may have different interests, desires, and motives. This means that companies should focus on a personalized approach instead of creating a website targeted at a wide audience. Ignoring this can result in low action or conversion rates.
That is why personalization is one of the most attractive options among marketers. The value of this practice is that it helps to anticipate and respond to consumer needs.
The main benefits of web personalization include:
- Well-optimized landing pages. An individual approach to landing pages improves the first impression of the brand and makes your website stand out.
- More qualified leads. Qualified leads are more likely to buy or subscribe to your products or services and enter your sales funnel.
- An enhanced user experience. A user-friendly and intuitive website encourages the visitor to explore it, so visitors can spend more time on the website, which also increases the chance of making a purchase.
- An increased brand awareness. By understanding target customers, their needs, concerns, and expectations, companies can offer better solutions to those problems. This approach increases awareness of your company and provides a competitive advantage that allows the business to generate higher revenue and build brand trust.
Types Of Personalization And Data Used
Website visitor targeting is based on data a business may collect and analyze to provide a personalized experience to customers. Thus, the company can be sure that the right content will be delivered to the right user at the right time.
The data that is most valuable when it comes to web personalization includes:
- Location. User’s country, city, region, etc.
- Third-party data. This is data collected from external sources that can be aggregated.
- Behavior. How the user interacts with websites. This includes clicks, purchases, items added to the cart, page views, etc.
- Current page. This is the page the user lands on via URL, home page, PDP, etc.
- Traffic sources. This data provides information about where the user came from to your website.
- Time. This contributes to a better understanding of the lifestyle of customers, as well as allows businesses to provide targeted content on a specific day of the week or time of day.
- Explicit data. This is data collected by the content management system.
- Technology. This is valuable information about the device, platform, browser, and even the user’s screen resolution. This data helps provide the best user experience for each website visitor based on the technologies they use.
Website personalization can vary depending on business goals and user needs. At the same time, several effective methods and tools are common to most personalization strategies. This includes:
- Notifications and widgets. These are useful and unobtrusive elements, often located in the corner of the screen or as floating bars.
- Messaging. This method is used for communication, promotion, emergency notifications, CTA tactics, etc.
- Search personalization. This method allows you to customize the output of information when searching based on the visitor’s preferences and behavioral patterns.
- Pop ups. This method is best used to highlight a specific offer or important information.
- Dynamic content. Dynamically generated content variation is one of the most effective web personalization tactics. This replaces static banners or ad units with targeted content that can be of value to a particular user.
- Menu personalization. This allows you to reorder the navigation bar to tailor it to the visitor’s needs and preferences.
- Landing page. Another useful method is landing page personalization. Instead of the same page for all visitors, a company can offer more customized options to create the right experience for the visitor based on their preferences and interests.
- Recommendations. The data collected about user interactions and behavioral patterns can be used to offer targeted content and recommendations about products/services that may be of most interest to a particular website visitor.
All these tactics and methods can be applied differently depending on the desired result. However, their main advantage is that they make the website more interesting for the visitor and increase engagement, unlike standard websites without personalization features. Thus, the visitor gets a more personalized experience, and the business can increase the conversion rate.