Website Personalization – Why It Is a Must-Have in 2022

With over 1.88 billion websites in the digital domain, standing out from the crowd is quite challenging for businesses today.

A good-looking SEO-optimized website with fresh content and fast performance is not enough to engage and convert users.

Businesses now need to resonate with their visitors on an individual level to influence their experiences and decisions.

And an effective way to do that is website personalization.

In this blog post, we will cover website personalization in-depth along with its benefits, and challenges. We also look at some tools that enable website personalization and help you enhance user experiences.

What is Website Personalization?

First things first, website personalization is the process of creating unique digital experiences for visitors according to their interests, past behavior, and demographics. It helps deliver one-to-one experiences to individual users instead of catering to the ‘average user’ through a one-to-many approach.

Website Personalization vs Website Customization

Both website personalization and website customization involve creating tailored web experiences for users. Therefore, they are often mistaken for each other. So, before going any further, let’s first understand their difference.

At its core, website personalization is controlled by a business. It is how a business tailors its user experiences with the help of customer data gathered from their previous interactions. For example, dynamic content and relevant recommendations on a website.

On the other hand, website customization is controlled by the user. It is how a user modifies their experiences through filters and preferences to suit their specific needs. For example, product filters and ad preferences on a website.

Need for Website Personalization

It’s a given that people are constantly bombarded with a ton of messaging online. With every brand trying to compete for their attention in every possible way, it’s natural that user expectations have gone high.

Now, people want messages that are relevant to them and resonate with their needs and interests. Personalized messaging and experiences help them efficiently and effectively fulfill their purpose which, in turn, creates a positive brand impression for a business.

A survey also revealed that 86% of consumers are even willing to pay more for personalized experiences. Hence, personalization has now become businesses’ top priority.

Examples of Website Personalization

Owing to the growing importance of website personalization, many businesses are utilizing it to offer their users exceptional experiences. Some of these include-

• Google News
  Google News offers users tailored experiences by featuring personalized news for them in its ‘For you’ section. It pulls out relevant news stories from various sources based on their past browsing history on Google.
• Amazon
  Amazon has a limitless product base but it only displays the most relevant products to a user to personalize their experience. It analyses users’ past behavior on its website and shows them products based on this data.
• Netflix
  Netflix offers personalized content recommendations to its users to enhance their service consumption. Its algorithm estimates a user’s interest based on their interactions with the website, device used for access, watch time, and details of previously watched shows.

Benefits of Website Personalization

Now that we have covered the basics, needs, and successful examples of website personalization, it’s time to look at some of its useful benefits for businesses.

1. Enhanced Lead Nurturing
According to a report, leads nurtured with tailored content showcase a 20% increase in sales opportunities. A well-planned nurturing cycle combined with relevant website content enables you to deliver users highly-personalized experiences. With the help of an auto form fill feature, you can further simplify the conversion process while reducing friction for users to move to the next step in their buyers’ journey.

2. Relevant Product Recommendations
Website personalization helps you provide accurate and relevant recommendations to users based on their past website visits and behavior. This not only helps in building engagement but also enhances conversions. You can also use the gathered data to retarget ads to get them to revisit your website.

3. Shorter Sales Cycle
Driving online sales is a lengthy and challenging process. But website personalization can surely improve and speed up the cycle. A dynamic website design coupled with high-impact sales copy and landing pages is quite effective in eliciting better responses from customers to drive more sales.

4. Increased Customer Loyalty
By understanding your customers better and delivering consistent personalized experiences, you can build higher customer loyalty. Website personalization helps your customers feel like they are being treated as unique individuals which is crucial to building trust and brand equity.

5. More Engagement and Conversions
People pay more attention and respond well to things that pique their interests. Personalizing your website means you can get your visitors to stay longer by offering interesting experiences to them. Furthermore, it can help you influence their perceptions and decisions through highly personalized content and call-to-action.

Challenges in Website Personalization

Website personalization is, without a doubt, a winning business strategy but exercising it is not without its difficulties. Listed below are some major challenges that businesses face in implementing website personalization –

Privacy Concerns
Many websites use third-party cookies to track and record user information to personalize their experiences. But due to growing privacy concerns, many browsers have blocked third-party cookies by default. Additionally, with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) legislation in place in the EU, businesses are now required to get explicit permission from users to track, store, and use their data for personalization.

Performance Scalability
A standard non-personalized website can cache static web pages quickly and load them for users when they revisit your website. However, that is not the case with personalized websites. Caching a dynamic (personalized) web page is a tad difficult and usually results in a trade-off between speed and performance.

Data Management
Many businesses use various tools and platforms to collect user data to personalize their experiences. However, making these experiences seamless across all touchpoints requires real-time syncing of data from all sources. This means you might have to restructure your database to sync and manage this data effectively.

Tools to Enable Website Personalization

By now, you know the benefits as well as the challenges of website personalization. So, the question that arises next is—how to implement personalization in your website without letting the challenges slow you down.

Well, marketing automation might be just the solution you need! A high-performing website combined with a robust marketing automation tool can take your personalization game to the next level.

Marketo is one such tool that helps you automate your marketing efforts, customize web pages, and offer personalized messaging and support to improve customer satisfaction and business ROI.

Here are some tools to help you integrate Marketo with your website.

WordPress Marketo Integration Connector

WordPress Marketo Integration Connector enables you to integrate Marketo capabilities into your WordPress website. It helps you personalize your webpage content in real-time to keep users engaged and improve lead conversion through its progressive profiling functionality.

Drupal Marketo Integration Connector

Drupal Marketo Integration Connector helps you connect Marketo with your Drupal website to automate workflows and personalize web experiences. It leverages Marketo Smart forms to enable users to signup faster and effectively track their behavior in order to show them relevant content.

Cartiveo

Cartiveo is a Shopify Marketo Integration Connector that helps you deliver a holistic customer experience and send users personalized offers. It syncs bulk customer and order data in real-time to help you better manage workflows, maintain data consistency, and nurture leads to reduce cart abandonment.

Maginate

Maginate is a Magento Marketo Integration Connector that lets you share lead data across Magento and Marketo for better personalization. It helps you capture order information and map unknown leads to get a full view of your customer’s journey and tailor their experiences accordingly.

Personalize Your Website for Maximum ROI

Website personalization is no longer an option but a must for your business to get the best out of your online presence. A personalized website helps you deliver powerful user experiences that not only accelerate conversions but also fuel long-term brand-customer relationships that go a long way in your business success.

Want to Personalize Your Website for Best User Experiences? Contact Us!