The rise in online sales post-pandemic has caused personalization to become the new norm! More and more companies are jumping on the ‘personalization’ bandwagon, and rightly so too! Personalizing the user experience is a smart marketing strategy that has vast benefits for the e-commerce and martech industries. Indeed, Dharmesh Shah, co-founder at Hubspot, rightly pointed out when he said, “Many companies have forgotten they sell to actual people. Humans care about the entire experience, not just the marketing, sales or service. To really win in the modern age, you must solve for humans.”
This right there explains why personalization has become so important in the digital world today! Its because users are influenced by not just the product/service being offered, but also their overall shopping experience. And what better way to enhance the user's digital experience than through personalization!
But if you are someone who is just starting their personalization journey, and still not sure about what it entails, then this blog will answer all your questions!
Let's begin by answering the most basic question.
What is a personalized user experience?
Personalizing the user experience refers to tailoring the website according to each customer’s unique tastes and needs. This is achieved by displaying website content, discount offers, and call-to-action buttons tailored to the customer’s specific needs and preferences. This means that each customer will be provided with a unique digital experience similar to what they would experience firsthand if they shopped at their favorite local shop!
Why do I need to personalize the user experience? 🤔
As mentioned above, personalizing the user experience is the new market standard and the need of the hour. But it is also what the users demand!
Remember what Dharmesh Shah said above? Users care about the entire experience, not just the products. More and more users want their digital experiences to be enhanced by viewing relevant content.
But why is that so?🤔
Well, users are bombarded with an abundance of information and choices, which can lead to distraction and an overwhelming experience. Personalizing the user experience serves as a crucial tool in cutting through this clutter.
By tailoring the material on the website to individual preferences, personalization streamlines the browsing process, saving users valuable time ⏳and empowering them to make informed decisions swiftly. 👍 This approach also allows users to efficiently navigate through the vast array of options available online, ensuring that their browsing experience is both productive and satisfying.
More importantly, the expectations of today's consumers, especially Gen Z, are very personified, and they demand seamless and engaging digital experiences that anticipate their needs and provide solutions accordingly.
Numerous studies have proven this. One report shows that 71% of users expect companies to provide them with personalized user experiences, and 76% get frustrated when companies fall short on doing so!
Thus, in order to attract new users and retain old ones, it is mandatory for companies to use personalization to enhance the user experience.
Advantages of user experience personalization
Increased customer satisfaction and loyalty
Since personalization is the user’s demand, businesses using personalization have more satisfied customers as compared to businesses that do not use personalization.
This satisfaction translates into increased customer loyalty and retention rates. This is supported by a study that shows that 60% of users agreed to return to the website after having a positive, personalized experience on that brand’s website.
Increased customer engagement and conversions
Personalizing the user experience causes users to stay logged on the website for longer. This improves website engagement and also increases the chances of the customer ultimately purchasing the products, boosting conversions!
Increased profitability
User experience personalization helps organizations improve their profitability in three ways.
Firstly, it causes more revenue to be generated as more and more users convert upon visiting the website due to their specific requirements being met. 90% of leading marketers agree that personalization has a huge impact on a business’ profitability, while another study concludes that companies that use personalization effectively earn 40% more revenue than their competitors.
Secondly, the average order value, which is the average amount users spend every time they visit the website, also increases due to personalization. This is because successful personalization strategies allow customers to purchase more at each website visit by displaying relevant product recommendations.
Thirdly, using personalization to target regular users by showing them new price plans to upgrade to new features, also allows organizations to boost their sales and increase profits.
Challenges of personalizing the user experience
Personalizing the user experience does come with a few challenges, though.
1. Customer data
Website personalization is fueled by customer data. Therefore, companies using personalization face all the challenges that come with collecting and segmenting data. They can be categorized into three types, which are:
- Huge Volumes of Data
- Bad Data
- Privacy concerns
Since website users are online and accessing a company’s website through different platforms and mediums, companies and marketers end up collecting huge volumes of customer data. This data can be quite overwhelming to filter out and use for effective personalization.
Furthermore, as customer preferences change, a lot of data becomes outdated and irrelevant. This data, often referred to as bad data, needs to be filtered out, otherwise, it will result in irrelevant and mistargeted website content being shown to users.
Using customer engagement platforms can help resolve these issues. This is because these platforms use various analytical tools to sift through huge amounts of data to determine which data is relevant. At the same time, they constantly update and validate user information to ensure only up-to-date user data is used to carry out website personalization.
Lastly, while collecting and using customer data, many companies face the challenge of ensuring that customer data privacy is not infringed upon! This has become an issue since data privacy laws came into action! These laws forbid companies from collecting personal user data without consent. They also impose transparency, meaning companies have to disclose information about the collection and use of customer data in easy to understand access agreements.
So if users deny consent, brands will be unable to provide a certain degree of personalization. However, according to a recent study by accenture, 83% of the respondents surveyed agreed to be willing to share personal information in exchange for a personalized user experience, as long as brands and retailers are open about how they are going to use that data.
Thus, companies can manage privacy concerns by openly disclosing particulars of the types of data collected in their data privacy policy. As well as, by employing robust security systems and encryption programs to protect personal user data from being hacked and misused.
2. Personalization strategy
Another major setback for companies is deciding what personalization strategies to employ and how to implement them.
With the influx of information available online, choosing the right strategy can be quite daunting!
Well, Relevic is your solution to these problems, as it offers consultation services that help guide companies decide upon the best strategy to get started with!
Call now and get a free 20 minute consultation from their experts with 7 years of experience!
3️. Personalization tool
Personalization can be implemented using various tools but with so many in the market, deciding the right one can be a difficult task!
Below are some of the top ranking personalization tools for you to start your personalization journey.
Relevic
Perhaps the only website personalization tool that offers certain services free of charge along with a very user-friendly interface is Relevic.
Relevic allows you to personalize the landing pages with attractive widgets and pop-ups, and personalized CTAs, using a drag-and-drop editor with multiple features. But the best part has to be that you can do all of this without using any code!
Moreover, it has a panel of experienced marketing consultants just a call away to answer all of your queries and a great customer support system.
So whether you are a small scale business just starting on their personalization journey, or a high end brand employing multiple strategies at once, Relevic is for you!
So don't waste time and try Relevic today!
Dynamic Yield
Dynamic Yield is another comprehensive website personalization tool that allows companies to personalize, customize and A/B test website content to increase customer engagement. Although its platform is easy to use, backed by a good customer support system, yet, it is too expensive for small businesses and has limited metrics for tracking performance.
Personyze
Another website personalization platform is Personyze. It has a good customer support system and good value for money. However, some users, especially beginners, find its dashboard a bit complicated to use and, initially face problems on how to use the platform to create personalized experiences at their own pace.
6 ways to personalize the user experience on your website
Now that you have an idea of what personalizing user experience means, let's discuss the different ways this can be achieved.
1. Personalized landing pages
One of the most effective ways to personalize the user experience on your website is to personalize the landing pages by creating dynamic landing pages. Dynamic landing pages contain content that changes in real time to suit each website visitor’s preferences. This can be achieved by using various types of customer data like browsing history, past purchases and demographics. As a result, each user is shown a web page that speaks directly to them and addresses their specific needs.
Think of Amazon
Every time a user logs on to Amazon, he/she is shown a landing page specifically designed for their part of the world. That is, a user from the UK is shown a landing page personalized according to UK fashion, displaying product recommendations according to UK fashion trends and that too in pounds! Whereas, an Indian user is shown the product prices in Indian rupees with product recommendations according to trending Indian fashion.
Similarly, Netflix also uses a personalized landing page to welcome each user back with a web page showing movie recommendations based on their past watch history and even ‘top 10 movies’ and ‘ top 10 shows’ that are trending in their specific country using the user's geolocation.
Dynamic landing pages have different elements all of which can further be personalized on their own to achieve the desired level of personalization to enhance user experience. These are:
2. Call-to-action personalization
Call-to-actions (CTA) are clickable buttons or hyperlinks that ask the user to perform an action. Examples include:
- Download Now
- Subscribe
- Sign Up
- Buy Now, etc.
Personalizing CTAs allows brands to grab user attention and increase conversions. YouTube uses personalized CTAs to convince its users with high engagement levels to sign up for its YouTube premium subscription service.
3. Hero image personalization
Whenever a user logs on to any website, the large attention grabbing image with text pinned to the top of the web page is referred to as the hero image. It is the first impression of the website to the user and effective personalization of the hero image has the power to capture the customer’s attention and immediately direct them to a CTA that leads to quicker conversions. For different users accessing the dynamic landing page through different social media ads, the hero image can be personalized to show a relevant image that matches with the ad.
4. Personalized recommendations
Using user browsing history and past purchases to personalize recommendations is the most common and still effective way to personalize and enhance the user experience.
Walmart uses user data effectively to personalize product recommendations based on user’s past purchases as well as recommend complementary products, which not only enhances the customer experience but also boosts conversions and sales.
Another example is the music app Spotify, which uses the user's streaming history, listening patterns, and favorite music artists to recommend personalized playlists to its active monthly users.
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5. Social proof personalization
Social proof refers to user’s testimonials, reviews, celebrity endorsements, and star ratings. Personalizing social proof on any dynamic landing page to show relevant user reviews and testimonials has the power to convince the users to take the relevant action such as make the purchase or subscribe, etc.
This is because social proof creates a sense of community among its users and also adds authenticity to your claims about your product/service.
6. Product personalization
Product personalization allows users to customize their products as per their own requirements and specifications. Nutella uses this strategy by introducing ‘ The Nutella Friends Edition’ which allows its buyers to customize 21 mini jars with personal messages.
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Examples of personalized user experiences
As discussed above, more and more companies are providing their users with personalized experiences.
For a detailed read, please read the other blog post “ 9 Successful Website Personalization Examples.”
Conclusion
In today’s world with over saturated markets and cut-throat competition, personalization is the only effective way to get an edge in order to increase customer engagement and conversions. Using the different ways explained above and the right personalization tool, companies can personalize user experiences in real-time!
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