DELIVERING RELEVANCE How to Increase Engagement and Drive Results with Web Personalization

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1 BEST PRACTICES GUIDE DELIVERING RELEVANCE How to Increase Engagement and Drive Results with Web Personalization oho.com

2 What is Web Personalization? Websites have long been one size fits all experiences, but as marketers have found more effective ways to leverage user data and tools have become increasingly sophisticated, web experiences have come a long way. Marketers recognize the value of offering a more personalized and relevant interaction to a site visitor and see a greater return on investment when personalization is incorporated into a website. Personalized content can be based on user attributes including geographic location or device type, or by tracking site interactions such as current click path, menu selections, or past browsing history. When done right, personalized user experiences help websites better serve visitors by delivering timely content that resonates with each visitor s true interests and drives them take action, be it conversion, registration, application, or purchase. Predictive Personalization and User Profiles The most effective method and best practice for incorporating personalization into a website involves the use of dynamic personalization features, enabling websites to adapt in real-time to the changing needs of different users. This type of predictive personalization relies on a centralized database of user profiles populated over time as individuals interact with the site. The available user data predicts which content the visitor will find most relevant and marketers are able to configure and adjust rules that target specific content for each audience segment based on available profile data. Personalization has become increasingly popular for various reasons: Implementation costs have decreased as infrastructure has moved to the cloud and technologies have matured. Availability of tools has increased as many content management systems provide the features out-of-the-box. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions like Marketo, Hubspot, Evergage, and Pardot have simplified the deployment of personalization across channels by evolving their solutions to deliver dynamic content. Icons made by Freepik, Patrick M from licensed by Creative Commons BY Delivering Relevance How to Increase Engagement and Drive Results with Web Personalization OHO Interactive

3 User profile data types that can be valuable for creating a personalized web experience include: Explicit data Age, gender, interests, or other user information Session attributes Date/time, referring pages, click path, search keywords, etc. Visitor attributes IP address, geolocation, type of mobile device, browser, and OS/platform Data from third-party databases CRMs and/or marketing automation platforms By targeting content to user needs in real-time, websites can deliver more relevant and engaging experiences. This practice is sometimes called one-to-one marketing or realtime marketing for its capability to customize web content on-the-fly for each individual. 3 Delivering Relevance How to Increase Engagement and Drive Results with Web Personalization OHO Interactive

4 Implementing Web Personalization While personalizing an individual s marketing experience isn t a new technique it s been used in and web marketing for some time it is on the rise. Sites like Amazon, Netflix, Yahoo!, and Facebook have set a new standard for delivering highly personalized experiences and consumers have come to expect this type of experience from other websites. Providing specific, relatable content has become an industry best practice that has prompted marketers to incorporate multi-channel personalization into their digital strategies. Implementing personalization isn t as complex as you may think, but it does require an understanding who your users are, how they can be grouped together to create segments, and what their content and messaging needs are at specific moments of interaction on your website. Understanding Your Audience To deliver truly relevant content, you have to understand who is visiting your site, what their needs are, and how they prefer to engage with you. Because a user s needs are different at each stage of the purchase lifecycle, you need to ensure your content is tailored to their needs at the time of their visit. By creating personas profiles of the types of people in your buying process you ll be able to match the needs of each type of user to the most appropriate content and relevant messaging. To create personas that are an accurate representation of your audience, analyze existing data to identify types of users and interact with them first-hand to learn their needs and what resonates with them most. Ethos Visit v. Transaction Visit ETHOS Questions Answered: TRANSACTION Actions Taken: What is it like? What are my options? How does it work? I want to participate. I d like to purchase. I need to contact someone. 4 Delivering Relevance How to Increase Engagement and Drive Results with Web Personalization OHO Interactive

5 Segmentation A typical website serves multiple audience segments with varying needs. For example, a university website often serves both prospective undergraduate students and prospective graduate students. The undergraduate and graduate prospects are typically different age groups and have significantly different concerns and evaluation criteria for choosing a school. A good personalization solution allows marketers to define audience segments based on various criteria, such as: Demographics and characteristics about individuals, including name, age, job function, industry, company size, country, zip code, phone, and address Past behavior including responses to s, social media interactions, or previous website browsing activity Psychographic and ethnographic details about a user s interests, attitudes, preferences, and opinions Primary and secondary research including surveys, focus groups, and in-person interviews will provide valuable information about your various audience segments and is essential to defining effective personas and segments. By conducting research that identifies brand personas and keywords, marketers can use the resulting data to increase organic search placements and build successful pay-per-click campaigns. 5 Delivering Relevance How to Increase Engagement and Drive Results with Web Personalization OHO Interactive

6 Targeting With personas and segments defined, you ll need to determine the rules you ll use to configure your content so that the most relevant and appropriate information is served to each visitor based on their profile. Some criteria you can use to predict the needs of your site visitor include: The URL of the current page and any query parameters The channel source or referring URL of visitor ( , social media, SEM, banner ad, affiliate site, direct, etc) Whether or not the user is a first time or returning visitor Any search keywords the user has entered The user s browser type, mobile device, or operating system The current date or time of day The user s country or location Testing and Experimentation Implementing personalization on your website can have a major positive impact on your key performance indicators, so it s important to ensure you are maximizing your results. To achieve an optimum return on investment, marketers must embrace the testing process and experiment with different targeting rules. This can involve basic A/B testing or require more complex multivariate testing and advanced real-time predictive personalization in order to find the right messaging and content mix for website visitors. Determining the best combination of relevant information is key to successfully adding personalization features to a website. Quick Tip To implement testing on your website, consider using the Experiments feature of Google Analytics, which compares how different web pages or app screens perform using a random sample of your users. 6 Delivering Relevance How to Increase Engagement and Drive Results with Web Personalization OHO Interactive

7 Web Analytics and Visitor Data Marketers have access to incredible amounts of web analytics and user data through various tools and resources ranging from free to expensive and basic to robust. By analyzing available data to gain insights into visitor behavior and determine the effectiveness of site content and user flows, marketers can get a sense of where their website is successful in engaging visitors and where there are areas of opportunity. Specific metrics that are commonly used to measure the effectiveness of site content include: Average time spent on site Page abandonment or bounce rates Offer engagement (form fills) Conversions (form submissions) Number of payments processed Social sharing (tweets, likes, and shares) To ensure an accurate picture of the results of personalization features you add to your website, make sure analytics reporting is configured to measure the effectiveness of targeted tests or experiments. A personalization solution should provide integrated analytics and reporting that will clearly show which personalized content resonated the most with each segment of website visitors. Companies that use data to deliver personalized customer experiences have 49% higher revenue growth and 30% higher ROI than those who do not. Source: Monetate 7 Delivering Relevance How to Increase Engagement and Drive Results with Web Personalization OHO Interactive

8 Ways to Personalize the User Experience With so much user data available, it s easy to get overwhelmed by all the ways you can personalize content and the overall user experience. Implementing small touches of personalization is a great way to get your feet wet. Some places to start: Internationalization. Change the language, currency, and other details based on the locale or region of the visitor. Self Identification. Ask the user for information in a pop-up or prompt. Geotargeting. Tailor messaging based on a user s physical location. Target them with specific offers, direct them to nearby retail locations, and provide local context. Holiday and Seasonal Targeting. Use the combination of user location and date/time to display any relevant seasonal messaging. Page views/clickpath. Examine which pages the user has previously visited and use that information to predict what they are interested in. Platform/Device Targeting. Personalize content based on the platform or device the visitor is using. For mobile visitors, electronics retailers can promote iphone accessories to visitors browsing on iphones, while Android phone visitors would see promotions for accessories for their phones. Downloads. Users initiating downloads of media files and PDF documents are demonstrating interest in specific content. Site Searches. When a visitor searches for something on your site, they are providing you with specific keywords that describe their interests. Content can be further customized based on user search phrases. Weather Targeting. Correlate visitor location with live weather conditions to tailor content to current conditions or forecasts. For example, a retailer can promote sunglasses on sunny days, and raincoats on the rainy days depending on the current local weather for each user.

9 Third Party Tools As web personalization has become a key component of digital strategies across industries, the number of available tools to help marketers implement it has grown. By using tools that extend the core functionalities of content management systems and ecommerce platforms, marketers have more control over their websites and a greater ability to target specific visitors with specific content. Some providers of available tools and services include: CMS agnostic Drupal specific Evergage Gravity Sailthru VisitorJS Hubspot Adobe Target testing-targeting.html CMS PLUG-INS WordPress Acquia Lift Acquia Lift provides the right content, at the right time through automation that serves the most relevant content to the site visitor. WP Greet Box Plug-in This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. Drupal Personalize Provides a suite of extendable plug-ins and APIs for personalizing Drupal content. WP Marketing Suite Geotargeting, channel sourcing, and device targeting. 9 Delivering Relevance How to Increase Engagement and Drive Results with Web Personalization OHO Interactive

10 Key Takeaways Personalization is leading marketing innovation and continues to be a critical component of digital strategy as it offers an improved user experience and helps drive business goals. Website personalization and A/B testing practices are becoming increasingly prevalent on websites across industries as marketers determine the best methodologies for implementation. Marketers should select and implement solutions that allow for easy testing, experimentation, and adjustment of targeting rules so that personalization strategies can be refined over time. There are nearly limitless ways to personalize the user experience. Start by adding features that rely on information like location or clickpath and test the results to determine which elements of personalization are most effective for your website and visitors. To offer a multi-channel personalized approach, marketers should customize both on-page content and targeted s for users. 10 Delivering Relevance How to Increase Engagement and Drive Results with Web Personalization OHO Interactive

11 About OHO Interactive OHO Interactive is an award-winning digital marketing and strategy agency that specializes in conducting user-based research to craft strategies that increase conversions and drive organizational goals. Our cross-functional team of digital strategists, researchers, project managers, designers, developers, and engineers collaborate with clients in the education, travel, and healthcare sectors to create exceptional web experiences that delight users and turn prospects to customers. For information and resources, visit oho.com