3 Personalization Best Practices, Where to Start

Personalization, when done right, can be the missing key for customer experience optimization. Customers want and expect the brands they interact with to provide them relevant information throughout their online experience. And this expectation doesn’t just apply to household brand names. Customers want their online experience tailored to them no matter who they are visiting. Here are three best practices to keep top of mind when personalizing your site and improving the customer experience.

1. Base the experience on behavior and not just demographics

Demographic information can only tell you so much. For example, it may seem safe to assume that a shopper from Alaska is going to be more interested in snowshoes than a shopper from Florida, but this doesn’t account for the Floridian who frequently travels to cold weather spots.

Instead, start with demographic information but then move to more sophisticated segmentation based on behavior. For example, take the shopper with the Florida IP address who is browsing in Chrome, on a Samsung phone, who reached your page from an organic search, and previously viewed snowshoes on your website. This approach gives you a lot more information on how to provide the best customer experience to that specific customer versus basing everything just on the fact that they are in Florida.

2. A/B test your personalized experiences

Just personalizing an experience is not enough. You need to know if that personalization is even working. To ensure this, you need to A/B test and measure those experiences.

Considering multiple approaches will allow you to A/B test different creative and a spectrum of options from the subtle to the bold. Additionally, it always helps to consider if these learnings apply to other areas of your site. Without A/B testing you’re only scratching the surface of personalization.

3. Iterate your personalization

In digital optimization, what works today may not work tomorrow, and what works on your site probably won’t work on mine. This is because there’s no template. Every website is different, and every visitor is different. To achieve a personalized site that works for you and your customers, you must iterate repeatedly. To have a truly personalized digital experience you must be continually evolving.

With website personalization, these three best practices should be top of mind. It will help you improve the customer journey which in turn, will provide a better experience and generate revenue for your company. And don’t forget to register for our live webinar, “How to Leverage Personalization in Your CRO Strategy”, on February 24th, 2022 with guest speaker Jonny Longdon from Journey Further. We will explore personalization and how it impacts your conversion rate. Register today!

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