Website personalization: What it is & how to get started

Historically, websites have served as the virtual storefront of most businesses, a place to learn more about a company or directly purchase products and services. Most websites today, however, are static, meaning they show the same information to every visitor. While consumer applications have started to personalize the experience for end users, websites have yet to catch up to the trend. Thanks to recent advances in technology website personalization is now possible, and a key tool to use in differentiating from the competition.

The concept of website personalization is simple: custom web experiences are served by leveraging data pertaining to the visitor such as demographic, firmographic, or other known information to provide them with a relevant experience. Personalizing a website has been proven to increase engagement and the likelihood of conversion from visitors.

The importance of website personalization

Most marketers know that website personalization drives higher conversion rates and more revenue. McKinsey analysts estimate that personalization could create between $1.7 and $3 trillion in new value for companies. It stands to reason that companies that don’t personalize their websites will fall behind competitors in their respective industries and ultimately lose market share to those who embrace website personalization.

While the importance of website personalization may be perfectly clear, there are misconceptions around how difficult it is to plan and implement a personalization program. In reality, it’s best to keep it simple when starting out. Here are a few things to consider when exploring website personalization as an option for your brand:

1. It doesn’t have to take a long time to get started: Look at identifying three elements of a webpage to personalize and testing three different versions of each element at the same time. This allows you to get started quickly and helps you identify which personalization efforts are having the greatest impact on performance.
2. You don’t need first-party data: First-party data can almost always help improve performance, but it’s not required. Contextual data such as geography, time of day, first visit/repeat visit, day of the week, and device type are available on every visit to your site. It’s easy to overlook the value of this contextual data; however, it’s common for these attributes to enable double-digit lift for marketers.‍
3. Website personalization won’t create inconsistent messages: Personalizing your site experience enables you to engage each of your website visitors in ways that are uniquely relevant to them. Each potential customer has different questions and considerations before moving to the next phase of their buyer journey. Website personalization enables you to have a consistent message for each visitor, every time.

There are some fundamental differences between traditional personalization, where marketers create segment-specific definitions, and AI-driven personalization, which leverages the power of machine learning to deliver unique experiences. It’s important to understand each method, and teams should keep these considerations in mind when determining the best method for their programs:

1. With AI, audience segments don’t have to be predefined: Personalization with machine learning doesn’t require you to predefine segments. Instead, AI-driven personalization automatically discovers segments by observing how messages perform for different audiences.
2. ‍Technical and engineering expertise isn’t required to start website personalization: Building your own personalization engine from scratch is resource intensive and requires specialized expertise. Instead, explore partnering with an external solution provider to help you with your personalization initiatives.

Previously, because of the high technical bar in creating AI-driven personalization systems, this approach has only been possible for some of the largest technology companies in the world. Today, marketers can implement an AI-driven personalization solution by adding just a single line of code to their website. With this approach, getting started with personalization is more accessible for companies of all sizes looking to deliver better user experiences.

With this in mind, it’s time to actually get started with website personalization — and that means exploring data.

Getting started with website personalization

How do marketers really use data in their personalization efforts? Here are five best practices for using data to build successful website personalization:

1. Leverage the data you can see on every impression: It’s easiest to start with data that is commonly available on every impression. This includes data such as device type, time of day, day of week, geography, and more. High performing segments are often found via this routinely available data. When you’re considering personalization, make sure the tools you are using can efficiently make use of this data.
2. Take advantage of UTM data: Use UTM parameters on links driving traffic to your site to further personalize based on the channel the visitor came from. Creative content, platform, and keywords can be useful in creating a seamless experience across your paid campaigns and your website.
3. Use first-party customer data to personalize the customer lifecycle: Your most valuable customers expect to be treated differently than a first-time visitor to your site. Recognizing these customers with tailored offers reinforces the relationship and can increase conversions and loyalty. Conversely, tailored offers for first-time visitors might look like free trial incentives or other messages around trying the product before they purchase.
4. Leverage third-party data for better relevancy: Third-party data can be particularly valuable to create relevant experiences for your site visitors. Some of this data can be demographic, such as age and gender, behavioral, such as past purchases and interests, and firmographic, such as reverse IP lookups.‍
5. Lean into AI: Given the rich set of data and number of potential segments available, using an AI based tool is particularly valuable for automating segment discovery and simultaneously learning which variations perform best for each segment.

AI and machine learning for website personalization

Website personalization doesn’t have to be a daunting ordeal. With AI and machine learning technologies now available, scalable website personalization is more accessible than ever.

Much of the work of conversion rate optimization is in managing experiments — design, setup, implementation, and analysis. This work is important, but also sometimes tedious and repetitive. AI automates the rote tasks involved in website testing, automatically applying learnings and freeing up marketers to focus more energy on strategic initiatives and projects that require human creativity.

Using AI in your website personalization program can also help you validate your assumptions about what resonates with your audience. Rather than pre-determining the messages that will resonate with each audience group, you can set up multiple options for each audience. This helps you learn what resonates with each audience and can inform the strategy for additional marketing campaigns.

To learn more about using AI to create a highly personalized website experience for your customers and prospects, get in touch with our team today.