Tips to Personalize Your Website/Onpage Content

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Tips to Personalize Your Website/Onpage Content

Ever felt that an advertisement just read your mind? Or you visit a website and see its content is precisely relatable to you?
The occurrence of such events has become more frequent than ever. And, these events are not mere coincidences but planned personalized marketing efforts.
In Germany, The Period Company came up with an idea of selling sanitary pads through book sales as the sanitary pads were taxed 19%.
As you may agree, consumers are becoming smarter with every passing year. And gaining your customer’s attention in this huge competition has become more challenging than ever.
Here is where personalized content marketing knocks on the door. It helps you attract your targeted customers with ease and grow your conversions.
So, read on to learn:

What is Personalized Content?
Advantages of Having Personalized Content
How to Create Personalized Content
Examples of Personalized Content
Personalized Content FAQs

What is Personalized Content?

Personalized content is a type of content that delivers a relatable experience to every unique visitor. This content follows some specific criteria that are unique or customized for every visitor. It is dynamic as the changes are in real-time, with the use of algorithms.
It targets only the potential audience of a brand or business.
Marketers employ cookies and SEO data to gather information about their target customers. This information further drives the personalized content marketing strategies.
Now, some of this crucial data include:

Your target users’ age, demography, gender, interests, etc.
It also includes their buying behavior and their preferred search terms.

The algorithms utilize this data to understand who is viewing your content. And it delivers the personalized version of the content to this particular visitor, so he finds it relatable.
Personalized content plays a significant role in attracting relevant traffic and boosting conversions.
Here are some insightful numbers that show the importance of personalized content:

91% of consumers said they prefer to buy from brands that show them a personalized offer.
74% of shoppers won’t shop from a brand if its content doesn’t align with their interests.

Most marketers believe content personalization is the need of the hour. And customers today expect brands to personalize content and offers for them. Moreover, 40% of consumers readily accepted an upsell offer as it was personalized.

Advantages of Having Personalized Content

1. Increased Conversions is the Primary Goal

Personalized content helps you display the right information at the right time to a customer. It attracts a user, helps him walk down the sales funnel, and finally converts him.
For example: You love Pasta, and a website uses this information to customize its content for you. Now when you visit the restaurant’s website, it shows “Pasta” as the chef’s specialty. On seeing it, you would be intrigued and might love to check it out.
It is how content personalization works. And it can grow your conversions significantly.
A common form of personalized content we often witness is through email marketing.
Here’s one of the templates for how personalized content is used in email marketing.
A personalized email marketing campaign looks like this:

Personalized Subject Line: Including the recipient’s name, company name, and personalized email topic; And dynamic tags help personalize all this information.
Personalized Email Content: Including the recipient’s name, relevant body text, and dynamic CTA; This content usually refers to the user’s previous interaction or interest.
Personalized Landing Page: Including smart or dynamic content relevant to the email content; And it has a dynamically changing CTA.

Such an email campaign receives a high conversion rate.

2. Effective Lead Nurturing

Another significant benefit of personalized content is lead nurturing. When you personalize content, you utilize various information about the target customer. This information can be his/her age, location, interests, intent, or any other specific data. However, a critical piece of data is the lead’s position in the sales funnel. Through this information, you can adequately nurture the lead.
Here’s an example of personalized content that attracts only the potential leads.

When a target user is at the funnel’s top, you might show him more available content. This content can include various options related to his interest.
The option he chooses can help you personalize the content for him on the next page. So, as the customer moves further down the sales funnel, you can personalize accordingly. This practice helps you guide a customer to the bottom of the funnel and convert him.
Now, imagine a user revisits your site, and he is already at the bottom of the sales funnel. In this case, you can show him exceptionally personalized content. And this will help you convert him quicker and with ease.

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3. Better Shopping Experience and Quicker Conversions

Personalized content impacts the customer’s shopping experience in several ways:

It helps a user find results to his query faster
Things like cookies help offer more personalized content to the users. Here’s an example that returns the Nike brand in the results as the Nike site was surfed prior to it.
It makes the user relate to content and allows him to make choices quicker
It cuts down his time of navigating through different sites and pages to find relevant results
It makes the overall shopping easier for the customer

Now, let us understand how personalized content can help you with quicker conversions. Here, factors like dynamically-filled forms and one-click purchases come into the picture.
As you may agree, shoppers are more likely to shop if the checkout process is shorter. Personalized content helps you eliminate the long checkout processes. And memorizing personalized information helps customers avoid the same hoops.

Personalized content allows sites to fill forms using a shopper’s data automatically.
Moreover, it can also save a shopper’s card details for upcoming transactions. And so, the customer can enjoy a one-click purchase. It has become a standard practice today in many fields. And owing to it, businesses can expect increased conversion rates and quicker conversions.

4. Mature and Optimized Sales Strategy

Except for marketing, personalization can also impact your sales channel. Algorithms use customer data to produce dynamic or personalized content. You can also use this customer data to inform your sales strategy.

Personal data about prospects can help the sales team prepare a personalized pitch for sales calls. Here’s an interestingly optimized sales strategy that Cadbury used back in 2015.
This practice will help them easily convert prospects into sales-qualified leads. And they can further convert these leads into customers faster.
Furthermore, companies use customer data to automate sales emails as well. These emails use dynamic tags to personalize content for each prospect. This practice eliminates the dependency on bulk emails. Moreover, it allows the sales team to blend the benefits of bulk mailing with personalized emails.
If it is a chain of multiple emails, you can use combinations of automated and manual emails. Utilizing personalization for sales calls and pitches can help you grow your conversions.

5. Fresh Content with Progressive Sales Funnel

A crucial advantage of personalized content is that it enables you to offer fresh content. So, when a user revisits your site, he does not find the same content as his previous visit. It also means that he does not find the same offer which he declined the previous time.
Therefore, you can deliver users a unique customer experience every time they visit your site. You can analyze a user’s behavior and interactions on the site during his previous visit. If he had bounced back without interacting with any offer, then showing him, the same content might not be beneficial.
Thus, most e-commerce stores offer fresh and personalized offers for returning audiences who haven't made a purchase.
Instead, you can use algorithms to change the offers on his next visit dynamically. It also gives shoppers a reason to revisit your site. And when they find new offers during their revisits, their conversion probability grows. These dynamically changing offers also increase repeat business.
Moreover, you can change the content based on the lead’s position in the sales funnel. So, every time a user revisits your site, he moves further down the conversion funnel. And this leads to growth in conversions as well.

6. Boosts Customer Loyalty

So, the benefits of personalized content are two-way. When you deliver personalized content to visitors, it resonates with them. They can find the most relevant information in a faster and easier way. It can be through personalized emails, web content, blog posts, offers, digital ads, etc.
This is one of the top ROI strategies that build commendable customer loyalty.
There are several reasons why customers like personalized shopping:

It shortens their time to find the most relevant results
The content resonates with them, and they feel that the brand understands their concern
They get access to personalized offers, which adds delight to their shopping experience
They can enjoy an easier shopping experience with a one-click purchase model
They may find new personalized offer every time they revisit a website

Customers appreciate the efforts of a brand that delivers a personalized shopping experience. And this delightful experience often converts into repeat purchases and trust.
Eventually, customers start choosing your brand more often and become loyal to it. The better experience you offer from your personalized content, the higher is the customer loyalty.

How to Create Personalized Content?

Now that you are aware of the benefits of content personalization, it is time to implement it.
Personalized content helps you better engage a user and convince him to take a call to action. And if your personalization tactic is correct, it can draw significant ROIs for a business.
Almost 50% of retailers that employ personalization earn over 300% ROI from it. And many other industries notice similar returns from personalization.
So, here are the key steps to produce and implement personalized content:

1. Learn About and Categorize your Target Customers

Personalized content feeds upon a series of data about your target customer. Unless you mine this data, you cannot feed your personalization strategy.
Today machine learning and AI algorithms have made it easier to source user data. This information is either mined from the user’s online behavior or his social media. It can be data about his actions on your website or his cookies information.
It can include his age, name, gender, psychographics, location, keywords of interest, etc. Further, it can include highly relevant and specific information like:

Pages he visited on your site;
CTAs he interacted with;
Offers he accepted and offers he declined;
The common exit page for same category customers;
His spending behavior and his spending potential;
His social media engagement and internet usage frequency;
The influencers or bloggers he follows.

The above information helps you learn a lot about your target customers. Now you as a marketer need to categorize your target customers based on specific data. You need to decide what would be the categories that make sense for your business.
For example, a restaurant business can categorize based on the location of food interest. Further, it can categorize based on previous order limits. This practice will help it plan personalized content based on these categories.
You can automate dynamic content, but you need to wear the strategist hat for categorization. Further, you need to plan the dynamic offers and content relevant to these categories.
To help you with categorization, let us move to the next section. It is the various types of personalized content you can implement.

2. Plan the Types of Personalized Content

So, by now, you know your target customers and have an idea of personalization categories. You now have to plan the most productive personalization type for your business.
So, here are a few common types of personalized content:

Location-based –

If you are a local business or offer services based on location, you can personalize for it. You need to add smart content for users from your targeted location. For example, here’s how location-based personalized content helps market yourself.
So, when a visitor from your targeted location visits your site, he finds this content. He can relate to it well and is most likely to convert for it.
This personalized content can be:

Free delivery offers for your targeted location
Special walk-in discounts for an outlet in your targeted location
Curbside pickup facility for the location

Age Factor –

Another personalization category is the age of your target customer. You can display different content to visitors of different ages.
For instance: Adult shoppers (above 40 years) generally prefer flat discounted rates over coupon codes. They do not wish to go into the hassle of browsing through too many options. And therefore you can suggest to them the best offers right away.
While younger generations, including millennials and Gen Zers, like more informed decisions. They wish to take a look at the various versions and would accept a good upsell deal. So you can personalize deals and content accordingly.

Psychographics –

One of the best ways to narrow down your personalization is through psychographics. It refers to the niche interests and preferences of your target customers.
For instance: You have an ecommerce store for sportswear, and you get visitors who are into sports. Now, there may be a huge category of visitors who love basketball or are basketball players.
One more best example is Netflix’s personalized content marketing strategy.
You can display them content relevant to the sport on the home page itself. It can be on various basketball gears and accessories. Or you can show the basketball gear brands you are offering. They would appreciate this type of personalization, and it would be a win for you.
Psychographics can include specific preferences of your target audience. And you can use them in various types of personalized content. These can be ad copies, offers, email content, blog posts, etc.

Gender –

You can also offer personalized content for different gender types. However, make sure it does not look biased or hurts the sentiment of any one gender.
For instance: A popular ecommerce brand personalized its content for working women. This campaign was to promote women’s empowerment and office-wear range for women. So, the brand displayed personalized offers to female visitors on their site. And this helped them gain trust as well as significant conversions.

Spending Behaviour –

You can draw information from visitors’ previous purchases on your website. You can analyze:

Their spending limits;
The offers they accept;
The CTAs they prefer to click;
The no. of pages they visit before purchasing.

Based on the above data, you can dynamically display the visitor’s personalized offers.
For instance, visitors that generally decline upsell offers might find them intrusive. And so, you can personalize the content for flat discounts or minimum upsell offers. It will help improve their shopping experience and grow the conversion rate.

Position in the Sales Funnel –

A stellar tactic is to display dynamic content based on a visitor’s position in the sales funnel. This tactic allows you to engage a customer with the right offer at the right time.
Various stages of the sales funnel when it comes to marketing include:

Visitor getting to learn about your brand and offerings
Visitor getting to learn more about a specific service/product category
He lands on a specific product/service page and shows a purchase intent
Sites offer not-so-personalized content along with assistance to take CTA.
He interacts with a CTA or engages with your team to enquire about the offering
He finally purchases the product/service

Based on the above position, you can display him unique personalized content at every visit. Each time he revisits, he finds content relevant to the next stage in the sales funnel. This tactic will help you guide the visitor smartly to the bottom of the funnel.

Source of the Traffic –

The source of the traffic also relates to the quality of the lead and the visitor’s intent. This information allows you to plan your personalized content accordingly. It also eliminates the hassle of creating multiple landing pages for multiple traffic sources.
The traffic source can be categorized based on:

Search terms used by the visitor
The platform they come from (social media, search engine, other referral traffic)
The ad copy they clicked to land on your site

For instance: A visitor searches for an informational keyword to land on your site. He intends to gather data about a topic, and he may be in the first stage of the sales funnel. Here, you can display him general content related to his search query.
Now, if a visitor clicks on an ad copy to land on your site, he is likely to have a buying intent. And so, you can personalize the content to show him the best offer, and he can accept it. It will add to your conversions quickly.
This is because providing personalized user intent attracts a more relevant audience and potential customers.
Source of traffic becomes a crucial parameter to plan your personalized content.
Every business has its specific target customer base with its characteristics. So, they need to choose the right type of personalized content that converts for them.

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3. Test your Personalized Content

Once you categorize your target customers, you need to map the different personas. Based on these personas, you can plan your personalized content.
You need to find the areas of your page or content that you can swap with dynamic content. These dynamic content areas will then change in real-time based on the visitor’s category. These areas can be your page headline, forms, popup offers, smart CTAs, etc.
For instance: When a visitor with high buyer intent visits your site, he might see a “Buy Now” CTA. If a first-time visitor comes with an informational intent, he might see “learn more” CTA.
You can test various categories, personas, and types of personalized content. You can utilize the customer data for your sales strategy as well.
This is quite commonly used well in e-commerce stores.
You need to reiterate your tests to find what works the best for your target audience. And what delivers the best ROI to your business.
Make sure you do not make the smart content intrusive for the viewers. And do not make changes frequently, as it might fade the shopping experience for repeat shoppers.

Examples of Personalized Content

1. Uber Eats

Uber Eats is a popular restaurant aggregator that has been offering personalized content. It collects information from its visitors’ previous visits to the platform. This information then forms the several forms of personalized suggestions that it offers. Also, it sends personalized push notifications.
When a user revisits Uber Eats, the app offers personalized content like:

Home page with Previously Ordered segment and Repeat Order option
Recommendations owing to the best deals
Dynamically changing banner images based on a customer’s previous food orders
Food suggestions based on the time of the day (breakfast, lunch, dinner)
Best-sellers at a restaurant
Suggestions of restaurants from where you have previously ordered
Best deals based on your location
Notifications based on your previous interactions with the application
Notifications about the best daily deals that are relevant to you

Images: Dynamically changing banner image based on customer’s interest
These suggestions are most likely to attract great user engagement and conversions. And these add convenience to users who regularly add food online through the app.

2. TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is one of the leading trip planning applications utilized globally. It uses app notifications and dynamic ads to offer personalized deals to consumers.
The platform can target users based on their trip history on its platform. Or it also uses a user’s search history to show him personalized ads.
Now when a user searches for any information related to travel on Google, TripAdvisor displays its dynamic ads to the user.
For instance, often, when you search for flights to a destination on a website. You witness TripAdvisor’s dynamic ads about stay deals at the destination to which you plan to travel.

Moreover, it utilizes user’s search history to display personalized offers on its app. The app also keeps a note of the user’s location to show trip suggestions accordingly.

3. Airbnb

Airbnb is yet another successful marketplace platform for booking homestays during trips. This platform also utilizes users’ search history to offer dynamic ads to them.
Moreover, the platform utilizes users’ cookie information and their previous bookings data. This data helps the platform to offer personalized notifications to an app user. These deals also depend upon the user’s location or the location to where he is traveling.
Whenever he visits the app, he can see suggested deals related to homestays at popular travel destinations. These suggestions allow travelers to plan their trips with much ease.

Personalized Content FAQs

1) How Is Personalization Different from a Recommendation When It Comes to Content and Offers?

Personalization refers to the process of creating an individualized experience for a visitor.
Personalization can be in the form of offers, web content, emails, ad copies, etc. And the data used represents the customer’s personal and behavioral information. So, the personalized offers and content are highly relevant for the specifically targeted users.
Visitors engage well with personalized content, and it increases their likelihood to convert.
Recommendations include displaying services or product offerings to a user. These recommendations can point at several factors. And when you utilize a user’s personal data for a recommendation, it becomes a personalized recommendation.

2. What Is the Future of Personalized Content and Offers for the Online Retail Industry?

Online retail or ecommerce is one of the first sectors to adopt personalized content tactics. These industries have been drawing stellar ROIs owing to personalization.
Almost 50% of retailers already draw over 300% returns through personalized SEO marketing. And the benefits of personalized content will grow exponentially in the future. And more and more ecommerce businesses will employ it.
The stats show commendable results after providing personalized content to the audience.

3. What Are the Top Personalization Tools a Retail Business Can Use?

Some popular ecommerce personalization tools include:
Barilliance – Overall personalization, product recommendation, cart retention, live shopping
Dynamic Yield – Product recommendation, real-time optimization, testing, used by – IKEA
OptiMonster – Popup offers, floating headers, personalized coupons, it is a robust tool
Monetate – Popular tool for smart customer segmentation and product recommendation
Salesforce Commerce Cloud – Smart product recommendations using AI named “Einstein.”

4. How Can I Implement Personalization for My Product-Based Ecommerce Business?

Ecommerce businesses have been leveraging personalization for a long time now. The key steps to implement your personalization strategy include:

Understand your target customers, collect their data, and analyze useful data
Map down the various categories and the various essential buyer personas
The type of personalization (age, location, lead’s position in the funnel, interests, gender, etc.)
Choose the most appropriate personalization type for your business and narrow it down.
Plan your personalized content and offers and test
Reiterate tests to learn what delivers the best ROIs

Summing Up

Personalized content has already become a standard in marketing. You must be probably leveraging it. If not, you must start today!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mariyah Harvey

Mariyah is an Internet marketing professional and she has more than 7 years of expertise in digital advertising, SEO & Marketing analytics. She holds a Master's degree from Kent State University in Business Management Technology.