Integrating Personalization Into Your Website Experience

It’s been said that the average person spends 15 seconds on a website before leaving or moving on to a different page. With mobile Internet use, those few precious seconds are even more important since users want information in their hands immediately. 

As of 2021, there are nearly 2 billion live websites on the Internet today. It’s not hard to believe that a user will “abandon” yours if they don’t enjoy the experience. 

Marketing companies and businesses alike have put a lot of focus on user experience (UX) over the last several years, but if you’re still struggling to come up with a strategy that will entice your site viewers and get them to stick around, consider how personal your website is. 

Because there are so many sites to browse, personalization is hugely important in engaging users while giving them the information they’re looking for. 

So, how can you do a better job of integrating personalization into your website experience? First, let’s talk about why it’s important, and then discuss how you can make it a priority for your site. 

The Point of Personalization

Every business has a target audience and a specific demographic. If you could talk to each person within that audience so you could cater to their individual needs, you probably would. Since that isn’t exactly feasible, your website can do a lot of the work for you. 

Website personalization allows you to tailor each user’s visit to their personal needs and wants. It allows you to understand your audience better, which comes with a variety of benefits, including: 

  • More effective calls-to-action
  • Greater conversion
  • Boosted search engine rankings

Because customer experience is so important, website personalization can build an emotional connection without face-to-face interaction. The more personal a site is, the more your viewers will feel valued and understood. That helps your brand and makes you appear more trustworthy, which can increase your initial sales. 

More importantly, though, it will help you to build a loyal customer base. When you have a tailored website, you also have built-in customer service. Your viewers will immediately know how much your company cares about them by the things they’re seeing, which will encourage them to keep coming back. 

Now that you know some of the benefits of integrating personalization into your website, how can you do it? 

Ask Your Audience

One of the best ways to improve customer experience and make things more personal on your website is to ask your target audience what they want. Simply asking for feedback will make users feel appreciated and listened to. Putting those suggestions into place will let them know you want their “site visit” to be as personal as possible. 

Integrate surveys into your website or blog, and send them out via email to anyone subscribed to your mailing list. Surveys allow you to gather data in real-time and use it to adjust things like: 

  • Product features
  • Overall content
  • Product strategies
  • Marketing
  • Sales

Surveys and requests for feedback often translate into stronger customer engagement and loyalty. You’ll have a mountain of data at your fingertips that you can implement right away to make personalized changes that improve UX. Unfortunately, 95% of data within organizations remains untapped. Don’t let that be you when it comes to gathering it and using it to your business’s advantage. 

Don’t be afraid to let your website viewers know about the changes you make. It’s a fantastic marketing technique to let your audience know you’re listening to them. Once you’ve implemented feedback suggestions, send out an email blast or create a “spotlight”  feature on your website that tells your audience what you’ve done and why your brand is committed to personalization. 

Use a Content Management System

If you want to make personalization easier on yourself, consider using a CMS. There are dozens available on the market, and some are better than others. According to TechRadar, some of the best include: 

  • WordPress
  • Squarespace
  • Magnolia
  • Weebly 
  • Bynder

A content management system is more than just a place to build your website. A CMS can help you with behavior tracking, browsing history, and location data from every user. That kind of information will make it easier to personalize your site based on every user’s past experiences and what they’re specifically looking for. It can also let you know what type of device each person is using to look at your site, so you can make better choices about the type of consumer they’ll be. 

For example, over 2 billion people shop online. Nearly 50% of them use their phone to make purchases. When you know that information about your target audience, you can create commerce pages that are very image-forward and easy to view for people on mobile devices.  

While you may not be able to customize every section of your website for each user, there are things you can do to make the experience more personal. Keep these ideas in mind, gather as much data as possible, and make changes known to your target audience to boost brand loyalty and trust.

Guest Author Bio: Amanda Winstead is a writer from the Portland area with a background in communications and a passion for telling stories. Along with writing she enjoys traveling, reading, working out, and going to concerts. If you want to follow her writing journey, or even just say hi you can find her on Twitter.