Personalize Your Website With These 5 Easy Tips
Personalization has been a hot topic lately as it relates directly to the user experience, which we all know has become paramount online. Most people enjoy a little personalization as it helps to make them feel special and important. As an app design and web design company we know exactly how important this concept is so today we wanted to help you personalize your Website with these 5 easy tips.
5 Easy Tips for Personalization
- AskFirst – One of the simplest ways to add personalization is when an account is made, perhaps because of a purchase or to gain extra features. At that point you can ask about adding a few personalization features such as utilizing a personalized greeting, providing purchase suggestions and more. The key is to ask as you begin so those who don’t want it don’t get it.
- Use Geolocation – We have mentioned the power of Geolocate before, where you map a visitor’s IP address to find the general area they are connecting from. You can then use this information to add personalization in the form of images or pictures on the display pages. For example, on the home page you could have an iconic image either as an inset or background based on the area of the user such as the NYC skyline, Wrigley Field or the Hollywood sign. This can make a site feel instantly personal and connected to the visitor. You can also use this to personalize content based on region.
- Recommendations – Tracking data points has become very power in regards to providing recommendations to people. Target and Amazon are truly great at this, recommending things based on your own and others search patterns. These recommendation geniuses are very powerful and can quickly and easily drive impulse purchases on retail sites and can also be useful to push affiliate website products. One caveat, make sure you offer more than just this option otherwise you are limiting exposure to your entire catalog of offerings. Perhaps on the recommendation you add at least one of your lowest selling items.
- Relevant Content – Content that relates to a users’ wants and needs is viewed as a bonus to visitors while content that has nothing to do with what they care about is just annoying noise. So how can you deal with this issue when you have a lot of users than cross demographics with different wants and needs? Using data from searches, account information that includes geolocation and even recommendation geniuses can all combine together to help not only develop content for user groups, but also to allow your site to prioritize certain content based on the user themselves.
- On Page Customization – Another powerful tool is to allow tools on the page that allow users to customize what they see in regards to search options along with a simple reset button. Far too many retailers don’t have these options or set them up in a way that customers can’t quickly find what they want which causes frustration. This can also be translated to sites that are content-based allowing different preferences for which articles are shown on top rather than basing them on publish date or shares.
Things to Remember
One of the most important things to remember is that you should be making changes to your website because it is valuable, not simply because you can. It is important to focus on adding value to the overall customer experience and not coming across as creepy or just doing things because you think they are cool. Remember, you want to help customers solve problems and meet their goals more easily.
You also have to be aware that website personalization is just like any other change you want to implement in that it should involve testing prior to launch. Make sure to provide useful options and not over-personalize which can then constrict users. Instead let them opt-in to additional personalization as they go rather than making choices for them.
The bottom line is that personalization on websites is a great way to increase your connection with customers. It is something we are all going to see more of and it is a great way to help differentiate yourself from the competition. You can personalize your website with these 5 easy tips which can help increase customer retention and boost your brand.
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