How to create a more personalized website

While personalization has the obvious benefit of increasing SEO ranking, it also lowers bounce rate and makes a good impression on users. They tend to spend more time on websites that are relevant to them personally than any others, and it makes sense.

Why would you visit a website you have no personal investment in? If you’re not interested in a product or service, why would you even visit a channel dedicated to it?

This is the same approach as targeted emails, and if you’re an avid marketer you know exactly what that is. We’re willing to bet you hook more potential clients with targeted emails than static, generic ones. Correct?

The right hook

According to Janrain, about 74 percent of online consumers are put off by websites that display content they have no personal stake in. To be honest, why wouldn’t they? Don’t you get upset when someone tries to profile your personality or habits and they get things completely wrong?

Naturally, it’s time you start delivering a more personalized website to your visitors. A study conducted by Monetate and eConsultancy revealed marketers who offer personalized experiences to visitors see an average boost of 19 percent in sales. Since that study was from 2013, it’s likely the increase in sales is even higher now.

But how do you do it? How do you personalize a website for each and every visitor that navigates to the portal?

How to create a personalized website for everyone

Since most websites have a wide range of target audiences, we suggest creating several masthead designs to cater to users. Each design will reflect one of the core target markets and is personalized based on that visitor — whether they be of a residential or commercial origin.

A one-size-fits-all marketing strategy is just not enough anymore. You can use a toolset such as MarketingCloudFX to create a more personalized website, or you can adopt a different approach to web design. Obviously, the toolset approach is much easier, but there’s nothing wrong with putting together your own design, either.

If you’re going to do that, there are several things you need to be aware of.

You’ll need an adaptable homepage

The main page of a website is the first thing every visitor sees when they land on your site. This means brand-new visitors and returning visitors will see the same thing if your page is static. That’s why one of the most important elements of a personalized site comes from creating an adaptable homepage.

When a visitor first arrives on your site, you want the call to action to be more subtle. Instead, you want to focus on informing the visitor of your main goals and purpose, in addition to educating them on your products or services. You don’t want to push them to sign-up or subscribe right away. Instead, it’s better to take a soft approach and essentially fill them in.

When it comes to returning visitors, however, you’ll want to be a little more aggressive. They already know what your company or brand is about, and they’re on your site because they’re interested. You’ll want to deliver them the most personalized experience, which can be done by explaining or showing what you can do for them specifically.

Amazon sets the bar when it comes to an adaptable homepage design. Return visitors to the site are shown product recommendations and deals based on prior viewing history, ratings or reviews, and past purchases they’ve made. Of course, Amazon has a much larger product base so the experience it offers is rather unique.

You’ll need to deliver fresh, targeted content

Simply put, you need something that will entice visitors to return. We already know this is done best by delivering engaging and useful content. People will return to soak up whatever you have to say, especially if it benefits them in some way.

The idea of personalization, however, introduces a whole new aspect to content and marketing. Let’s say you offer a free e-book to first-time visitors. If they sign-up with an email address, you’ll allow them to download the e-book or content for free.

Now, imagine someone goes through all of this because they’re genuinely interested, and they read the content. Once they’re done, they return to your site, only to be shown the same exact offer as before — an offer for a free e-book they’ve just read. You don’t want this to happen. If you offer them the same deal or content again, they’d most likely ignore it anyway, but that’s also a missed opportunity where you could have moved them further down the sales funnel.

To remedy this, all you need to do is filter your visitors differently. Thus, offering return visitors different content that’s more relevant and personal to them. There are plenty of tools out there that can accomplish this, such as Hubspot’s Smart CTA tool.

You can use their prior browsing behaviour on your site to offer a custom experience. Take note of things such as product pages they’ve viewed in the past, items they’ve added to a shopping cart and never purchased, past purchases or subscriptions, and more.

Better return from your site

When you personalize your site, with each design reflecting one of the core target markets and being personalized based on that visitor, you will see better results. Time to get going.