Your website is THE place to start if you’re considering implementing the idea of consumer personalization. Websites are the number one way that consumers engage with various brands.
Personalizing the time your visitors spend on your site is a powerful tool. Personalization not only engages consumers with your brand identity, but it also achieves concrete goals.
Personalization can drive your strategy, captivate your audience, and make your brand memorable.
Most marketers agree (98% according to a survey of marketing professionals) that personalization improves customer relationships, and that personalization is expected.
But when business owners fail to meet this expectation, it can mean our clients, customers and audiences are disappointed with our brand.
Your website is your brand’s personalization headquarters
The transition to GDPR compliance absolutely created more work for businesses. Now that we’ve done the hard part, let’s take a look at how using your visitor-data could help demonstrate your company’s concern for your audience.
You can test your ideas: With tools such as Certona and Optimizely, you can test different personalization strategies to see which is most effective. You’ll have the ability to change tactics quickly, which saves both time and money. You’ll be able to discover the best way to enrich the customer experience with your brand.
You can adjust your ideas for personalization in real time, almost as fast as visitors are interacting with your site. You can easily and quickly go back to a previous version of your page if you find that the new strategy isn’t working. If you find that your strategy is working, you can go ahead and scale that across the whole site if you want.
Three ways to use data for personalization:
- Identify repeat visitors: If you sell products or register your users, you can use the collected data to greet them or direct them to more relevant content on your site.
- Improve customer retention: When customer retention is the most important thing, consider how you talk to your customers. Try highlighting their purchases, preferences, or their status. Consumers who register on your site usually assume you’re tracking their data, so try to discover ways to make it beneficial for them.
- Identify new visitors: Even if you don’t know the specific names of the people using your site, you can still personalize their experience by using their IP addresses. (The IP address is a location’s digital address. It changes depending on what network the visitor used at the time they visited your site). You could use the collected data to make observations about your customer’s language preferences, the time of day they visited, and other metrics. You’ll make your new visitors feel special because you recognize them when they return.
Using personalization to achieve your business goals
Look at your click-through rates, conversion rates, scroll and exit rates, time spent on the site, bounce rates and other important metrics to see if you’re improving overall site engagement.
Then take a look at your Return On Investment. Was the investment worth it? Did your numbers change at all? Or did personalization have a negative impact on those important performance indicators? Evaluate these questions according to your goals and adjust your strategy to align with them.
Other articles you might like:
-6 Ways to Use Storytelling in Your Blog Posts
-Use a Thank You Page to Grow your Subscriber List or Customer Base
-Using images: Tips to improve your SEO rankings
Questions?
About the author
I developed Image and Aspect because I believe that professionals need to have an impactful web presence. One that showcases their unique talents, skills, and abilities as well as their values and style. A presence that focuses on social engagement and connection.
I’m passionate about what I do; I like helping fellow humans, I like having all kinds of social connection with others, and I want to give back, to make the world a better place.
I do much of the designing and coding myself, and I also have a wonderful network of professionals that may contribute as well; photographers, copywriters, branding experts.
I love designing and coding beautiful, elegant and responsive web creations. I ALSO teach and help others who want to learn how to do it themselves.
‘Tips and Snips’ is my blog, and it’s full of information and inspiration to help transform any online persona from “meh” to AMAZING! Sign-up HERE to get blog posts right to your in-box every Friday! I write about Design, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Branding, Vlogging, Color Theory, HTML5, CSS3, Bootstrap, WordPress, Social Media…anything you’d want to know to get yourself noticed online.
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Diane M. Metcalf, M.S.
