There is no doubt digital marketing is a must for your business in today’s millennial generation. You know the saying: if you're not on Facebook, you don't exist. The same could be said about any online presence in general.
However, today it is no longer just about existing in the online sphere. Customers have higher expectations. They expect to be getting the right messages to the right people at the right time, and in the right place. Personalisation.
Everyone appreciates the value of personalisation - being addressed by name, receiving relevant emails based on preferences, receiving relevant messages based on how ready they are to engage, or when the right time is to be targeted with ads on social media, to the the right movie recommendation on Netflix. The benefits are obvious - more engagement, more leads, more sales.
The concept of personalisation in your various marketing channels is essential, and even more so on your own company website. The hub of where customers get to know all about your brand and convert into a customer.
What is Website Personalisation?
Instead of providing a single, broad experience, website personalisation allows you to present visitors with unique experiences tailored to their needs and desires. From a technical point of view, we think about two concepts coming together:
Segmentation - When you define your target audience, or group your visitors based on common behavioral or demographic criteria.
Personalisation - When you tailor your messaging, content and offer to your target audience to provide a more targeted and engaging experience for the customer. And ideally, to enhance and improve the desired outcome and results of your campaign.
How does it look in practice?
Most businesses use web personalisation without even knowing they do it. It can be as simple as having a pop-up inviting your visitors to subscribe to the newsletter, or offering a discount on the first purchase, or using geo-location to display your website in the visitor’s language. The possibilities are endless.
Consider some of the following ideas:
A widget with a form inviting visitors to the event happening in their city, based on the geo-location
A banner promoting the services your returning visitors might be interested in, based on their search history
The order in which product recommendations and offers appear in your online store based on the past purchases
Different navigation bars for the competitors visiting your website (you can hide that ‘Services’ section and promote ‘Career’ link!)
A pop up with a discount code for the most loyal customers returning to your website and clicking through at least 3 pages during their visit
5 key steps to generate better leads, through website personalisation
If you are new to website personalisation, we recommend starting small and building up with time. Ideally, start with 3-5 pilot campaigns, report over time, and iterate your campaigns based on the results.
Below are detailed steps of defining such a campaign on a simple example of increasing your subscribers database for an eCommerce website.
Baseline - it is important to have baseline numbers to understand how successful your campaign is over time. In this example, let’s take the number of new subscribers in your database over the period of one month, originating from the current subscription processes, like a subscription form in the footer of your ecommerce website.
Define audience - when defining the audience, you might consider the following criterias:
Demographics:
Known or returning visitors - Ones that you already have them in your database. They may have purchased from you in the past, but they did not necessarily subscribe to your newsletter. You can display different messaging depending on what they’ve purchased or the amount of money they’ve spent.
Anonymous visitors - you only have their tracking pixel but no PII data. You can think of different messaging depending on how they landed on your website - did they originate from social media, search engine ads, organic search?
Location - country, state, city, etc.
Behaviors:
Known visitors - Did they make a purchase recently? Or do they have abandoned carts? This audience can be considered as highly engaged
Anonymous visitors - Are they first time visitors or returning visitors? You can consider different messages for both groups
Time: Linked to the behaviour of your visitors, it is worth considering the question of when a visitor should see the pop up:
How many pages have the visitors clicked through - should it appear on the first page, on the 3rd page, on exiting the website?
How many seconds did they spend on the subpage - should it appear straight away, after 10 seconds, 20 seconds?
How much did they scroll the website - just past the first row of products? Are they towards the end of the website? Half way through scrolling?
Work on the visual campaign - should this be a pop up, a widget, a banner? What would be the CTA? What image would you use? How many questions should you have on the form? What is the messaging? What is the incentive?
Personalisation - here you should consider personalising the message using data you have of the visitors. For known visitors, you can address them by their first name. Even with anonymous visitors you can include some personalisation, based on their city or state (‘Subscribe to get the best deals in Sydney!’) or the products they’ve been browsing (“You left these in your basket”)
Reporting - give your campaign some time to run. Take into account how many times the campaign was displayed and what are the conversion numbers. Dig deep! Compare the level of engagement or unsubscribes from the subscribers originating from this campaign.
Refine - after initial conclusions, refine and iterate your campaign. Run A/B testing, compare different CTAs, different segments, different timing. Keep improving to find that sweet spot of getting the most conversions with the least amount of effort!
Let's start!
Website Personalisation might sound like a scary and costly initiative, but with the right knowledge, focus and drive, it can be so simple.
If you’d like some help designing a more personalised experience across your website from an experienced partner, with a proven track record, drop us a line. Whether designing the strategy or implementing the technical solution, the team at Idea Science can help.
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