Web content personalization. What can you personalize?
Forget about your everyday business-related responsibilities for a moment and try to put yourself in the shoes of a customer who visits your website. What do you think they expect? This is a difficult question, especially considering that your webpage can be visited by many people with different needs. What if specific groups of visitors could enter your website and see exactly what they want?
Website content personalization
Internet access allows you to extend the range of communication. Your offer can reach not only the immediate surroundings, but even customers nationwide or abroad. However, the development of technology allows much more today. You can adapt the advertising message to the profile of a given customer and their preferences. This is what web content personalization is all about.
Content can be personalized in many ways. You can choose a phrase adjusted to the visitor (i.e. choose formal or more direct phrases), highlight specific services or use an appropriate method of argumentation. Personalization of content allows you to increase the effectiveness of advertising on the website with relatively low financial expenses.
Customer data is necessary for effective web content personalization
Effective content personalization is possible only when you have (or rather your website or application has) knowledge of a given user. The information about their needs, activities, interests and Internet purchases enables you to create a message tailored to the expectations of a specific target group to convince its members to learn more about your offer. In order to obtain this data and then enable the website to display personalized content, you need marketing automation tools. They make it possible to collect and analyze information about the activity of potential customers on the Internet, and are responsible for displaying relevant content to the proper recipients.
How do you obtain the data necessary to personalize the content on your website? It’s definitely a good idea to use tools for monitoring user activity. The second way is to create special forms, thanks to which your user can provide your company with certain information about themselves, their habits and needs, and register or subscribe to the newsletter on their own.
Personalized website content. The key elements
You already know what content personalization is, but what exactly is worth personalizing? Websites have many subpages. The customer can be redirected from the advertisement to the landing page, enter the home page or be redirected to the company blog. Although in theory almost every part of a website could be personalized, the most important thing is the personalization of the home page, subpages describing the company's offer, and those parts on the website, which should differ depending on the type of customer viewing the website.
You can use dynamic content in the case of permanent parts of the website (individual sections of the website) and pop-ups, windows and banners that automatically appear on the website and which the user can close after reading their content. The elements you can personalize include:
- headers,
- text blocks,
- hero section,
- CTA,
- descriptions of products and services,
- social proofs,
- recommendations,
- forms,
- pop-ups.
Does web content personalization impact SEO?
In numerous articles and on the websites of SEO companies you can find a clear message – you can have too much of a good thing. Using common sense is recommended when personalizing content on your website, so you should consult with the experts first and ask them for help in planning changes on a website. Consider in which areas displaying the content tailored to the needs of a specific target group can actually significantly increase sales. A large number of forms that block access to certain content may also have a negative impact on the position of the page. Google robots won’t fill out surveys and enter data in forms to get access to the content on your pages.
It’s definitely necessary to avoid so-called cloaking, the practice of displaying different content to the Internet users and to Google robots. It’s permissible, however, to present other content due to the device on which the user browses the website or on the basis of geolocation. The website positioning is indirectly influenced by content personalization. The position of the website in the search engine also depends on the website's traffic (the number of page views, bounce rate, time spent browsing the content).
Personalized content recommendations
Automating the recommendation of content (or in the case of e-commerce – of products or services) consists of displaying on your website the subpages to which you want to redirect your potential customer. You can find a blog or news section on almost every website today. By using the appropriate tools, you can match the recommended content to the interests of a potential customer visiting your website. This feature will be useful especially for service companies that have a wide offer range and online stores that can match the recommended products based on the user's previous purchases.
Personalized website hero section
The hero section of a website consists of two elements: an eye-catching graphic design and short but interesting content. It appears at the top of the page and remains visible while you scroll, meaning you don’t have to go back to the top of the page to see it again. The content of this section may include not only an attractive headline, a subheading, and often one or a few sentences containing more information about the subpage. Additional elements that can be found in the hero section are navigation buttons, thanks to which the Internet user can quickly move to another subpage or content within the same subpage.
The hero section can have various functions. You can treat it as a greeting, refer in its content to a specific service that you want to advertise to a specific target group, or inform about news (e.g. promotions).
It’s the headers, slogans, sentences developing the topic, and even buttons that you can personalize and make the representatives of different target groups see different greetings, messages and calls to action on buttons leading to different landing pages.
Personalized social proofs
Imagine that you’ve never used a particular service, product or technology and you want to know others' opinions. Let’s take an IT service as an example. If you’re on the website of an IT company because you need a new mobile application for your business, you won’t be interested in the comments on the company's effectiveness in implementing analytical tools or the advantages of cloud solutions.
All the recommendations have some value, but the comments of the people that are well-known, represent companies in the industry that your potential client is interested in, or who have used the service or product they are considering will definitely have the greatest value.
Personalized call to actions and pop-ups
The purpose of CTAs and any pop-ups is to interest the visitor to your site and convince them to perform certain actions on your site. There is no doubt that these elements should be especially well-considered and adjusted, in terms of style and message, to the expectations of the recipient. The goal is clear: increasing the conversion rate. Those that some may find to be too aggressive, others may find to be too laconic. In this area, you should definitely focus on personalization.
Dedicated content for first-time and returning website visitors
Your website may display different content to those recipients who visit it for the first time and to those who have returned to your website. A new customer will be pleased when they see a greeting header. You can also ask them to subscribe to the newsletter or ask for the data that will facilitate personalization in the future, using a dedicated pop-up. A returning customer shouldn’t, however, once again see the same pop-up windows or greetings appearing on subpages. However, you can inform them that the price of the recently viewed product has changed or that the product is now available (it’s especially useful in e-commerce).
Advantages of website content personalization
Well-planned personalization carried out with the right tools can do you a lot of good.
- You’ll significantly increase the sale of your services and products.
- You’ll improve the UX.
- The customers will be more willing to visit the website if they are interested in the properly adapted content. They’ll also like the brand more and their loyalty will increase.
- The analysis of data and customer needs will help you better define the target groups and plan your marketing campaigns.
- You’ll perform actions aimed at better positioning your company's website indirectly.
Do you want to test the power of marketing automation tools and web content personalization in practice? Are you wondering how to personalize your content using services for Mautic? Contact us - we’ll implement the latest solutions on your website.
