What is Website Personalization Optimization?

Posted by alvina on September 30th, 2021

Website Personalization Optimization is when you customize a website visitor’s experience of your website for the individual instead of providing the same experience for everyone. The process of the personalization optimization allows you to provide a unique experience for your website visitors according to their needs, desires, or geographical location.

In terms of customer service, personalization has been around for a very long time. From the old-fashioned direct mail that would be addressed to the customer by name instead of “Dear Valued Customer”, to the waitron who remembers their regular customers favorite dishes, to the store owner who calls a customer to tell them that there is new blouse in their favorite shade of green in stock.

Setting up a website personalization system enables you to use data to personalize your website in such a way that it will give your customers that warm and fuzzy feeling of attentiveness and good service in the digital world. This can include providing special offers targeted to prospective customers based on their browsing behavior, on the weather, or where they live, amongst many other things.

In the digital age, website personalization optimization is no longer a ‘nice to have’ addition to your online marketing strategy, it is critical. Consumers have been spoiled by the instant gratification of buying online and, in fact, have come to expect personalization from online businesses. It is so important that industry leaders have said that investing in website personalization software is something they are definitely going to do more of.

How to implement website personalization optimization.

You can target visitors to your site in real time depending on what actions they’re taking while visiting. This can be browsing your blog, searching for a specific place, or watching a particular video. It can also be based on data you’ve gathered about them previously like the preferences on their user profile or their past behavior on your site.

If you have a few thousand visitors to your site, or even a few hundred, contemplating creating a unique experience for each one of them can be overwhelming. You will need an efficient website personalization system to plan and manage the scale and complexity of your website personalization for it to be effective, as well as measure the results and adapt the experiences if necessary.

1. Gather your data

Decide what data you need in order to personalize the user experience effectively. You can do this by asking the user directly, mapping various paths through your website, using cookies and we beacons, drawing on company records, looking through social media engagements, analyzing email activity tracking, and buying data from an aggregator.

2. Create Customer profiles

Create a profile for three of your ideal customers at each of the different buying phases. Be specific and imagine your typical customer. Their name, age, profession, home situation, how much they earn, why they would buy your product, what questions they may have etc. This will enable you to create personalized messages that will appeal to them.

3. Set goals

Clearly define the goals you want to achieve. Increase traffic to a particular page, sign up for a newsletter, or buy a particular product.

4. Prepare your strategy

Decide which pages or elements you are going to personalize.

5. Implement your strategy

Draft campaigns to implement your website personalization optimization. Do some A/B testing before you do your final launch and don’t forget to use algorithms to fine-tune your campaigns.

6. Evaluate the results

Look at your website personalization optimization metrics across early, mid, and late-stage results. How long are people spending on your site? How many pages are they looking at? Are they following the path you mapped out? Are they responding to elements that have been personalized? Make any necessary adjustments.

Website personalization optimization has a huge impact on your goals and on your ROI. Investing in website personalization software to assist you will make the process much easier and is guaranteed to have a major impact on your bottom line.