21 personalized experiences for visitors' segments
With customer segmentation, you can personalize the website experience for your visitors at every step of their customer journey, boosting conversions and dramatically increasing your ROI.
However, it’s not always easy to come up with new optimization ideas to improve your website performance.
To help, this article outlines 21 ideas for creating personalizations that will enable you to improve the browsing experience for visitors and allow you to reach your goals faster.
1 What is personalization?
Personalization is a marketing strategy that involves tailoring experiences, messages and offers based on the characteristics of individual visitors.
What makes it so powerful is that it draws on analysis of your visitors’ personal, behavioral, contextual and technical data, and uses this to deliver an experience personalized to their individual needs and preferences.
The first step of any personalization strategy is to use audience segmentation to understand more about them, and then to use this to set the goals you’d like to achieve for each target group.
Personalization can be manual, with the marketer setting the criteria that define each segment, or predictive, with an AI algorithm analyzing visitor data and measuring each visitor’s purchasing probability in real-time.
2 21 ideas for personalized experiences that convert
Draw inspiration from these personalized experiments and pick those that best fit with your business goals.
- Capture the attention of new visitors.
- Turn visitors into customers by offering unique experiences so that your visitors convert on your website.
- Retain customers, nurturing the relationship so they remain loyal to your brand.
- Reactivate dormant customers, winning back customers who are no longer active.
QUALIFY YOUR VISITORS WHEN THEY ARRIVE
Unless you’re a big brand like Amazon, it’s very likely that a visitor to your website has never heard of you. You have around 15 seconds to grab their attention - otherwise they are likely to click to the competition if your website doesn’t meet their expectations.
1. GUIDE THE VISITOR AS SOON AS THEY ARRIVE
First-time visitors aren’t familiar with your website. That means it may be difficult for them to find what they’re looking for, and you risk losing them.
To resolve this, French online directory Pages Jaunes implemented a personalized help service on its site.
Targeted segment: new visitors during their first four visits.
Personalized action: when a targeted visitor browses the website, pop-ins appear based on the actions they take. For example, the website suggests filtering the results or even visiting the “hot deals” section.
Results: the team at Pages Jaunes have seen the average bounce rate decrease by 4% thanks to this personalization campaign which helps to build trust from the very first visits.
2. PERSONALIZE YOUR WEBSITE FOR THEIR FIRST VISIT
What better way to recruit a new visitor than to offer them a personalized experience the first time they visit?
This is what the team at online tire retailer Allopneus have done by introducing a welcome offer for new visitors.
Targeted segment: new visitors arriving on the website for the first time from a generic search on a search engine and then viewing product pages.
Personalized action: a pop-in is displayed with an offer that is valid for the purchase of two or more tires and available until midnight (regardless of the time the visitor sees the offer). This creates a sense of urgency.
Results: thanks to this strategy, Allopneus has seen its turnover increase by 17.5% and the brand attracts visitor attention right from the first visit.
3. PERSONALIZE NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP
A newsletter subscription is an important step for recruiting new customers. If your visitors sign up, you’ll be able to communicate with them by email and reach them more easily.
To maximize recruitment without spoiling their online experience, French travel website Routard.com implemented a personalized pop-in.
Targeted segment: visitors who are not yet signed up to the newsletter and have viewed three pages on the website. As they’ve seen multiple pages of content, they are considered more likely to see the value in subscribing to the newsletter.
Personalized action: the sign-up form is displayed in the form of a pop-in once three pages have been viewed.
Results: the newsletter subscription rate has increased by 76% and subscribers have had time to view content before subscribing, improving the experience.
4. PERSONALIZE BASED ON VISITOR PROFILE
To satisfy all your website visitors, you can personalize based on their respective profiles. This is a great strategy when you have different types of customers (business/consumer or buyer/seller).
Rakuten.com, a website where it’s possible to both buy and sell items, implemented a predictive personalization campaign to recruit more buyers.
Targeted segment: by analyzing the behavior of website visitors, the predictive targeting algorithm was able to identify the visitors displaying the behavior of a seller.
Personalized action: a pop-in was displayed to “seller” visitors offering the chance of winning €2,000 when they listed their first item for sale.
Results: since this competition was not open to buyers, they were not targeted and their experience was not damaged. As for “seller” visitors, the brand recruited 6.74% more of them.
5. PERSONALIZE OFFERS BASED ON VISITOR INTEREST
Every website needs to recruit as many visitors as possible to generate more leads. But if these
visitors are not qualified, offering them special deals will only end up costing you money, since they ultimately won’t convert.
The main goal of the Toyota website is to identify visitors showing a strong interest in the brand, and to get them into a dealership for a test drive that will ideally result in a sale.
The brand decided to use Kameleoon’s predictive targeting to identify those most likely to convert, as opposed to those who would either not go on to buy or would not turn up to a test drive.
Targeted segment: by analyzing the behavior of website visitors, Kameleoon’s predictive targeting algorithm is able to identify each visitor’s interest in buying a Toyota. The most interested customers are then targeted.
Personalized action: a personalized test drive request pop-in is triggered, showing the vehicle model and the closest dealership.
Results: thanks to this personalization campaign, Toyota now sends 97% more qualified leads to its dealerships.
TURN YOUR VISITORS INTO CUSTOMERS
Some of your visitors know your brand and may even visit your website regularly, but have never converted.
The challenge is to personalize the visitor experience as much as possible so that they have everything they need to take the next action on your website (whether that is a subscription, purchase or download, etc.).
6. PERSONALIZE THE HOMEPAGE ACCORDING TO VISITOR INTERESTS
To assist your visitors as soon as they land on your website and encourage them to stay, you can personalize your homepage, based on their interests.
ClubMed chose to deliver this based on the type of destination chosen: the beach or the mountains. This way, visitors are immediately immersed in the destination that interests them most and are more likely to convert.
Targeted segment: two segments — “beach” and “mountains” — are shown. The visitor personally chooses which segment they belong to on their first visit to the website.
Personalized action: the browsing experience is personalized around the chosen destination type (mountains or beach).
Results: thanks to this personalization campaign, ClubMed has seen an 18% increase in the number of sessions for targeted visitors.
7. PERSONALIZE THE NAVIGATION MENU
The visitors who come to your website are not all looking for the same thing. By identifying the pages or page categories that are most viewed by a visitor, you can reorganize your navigation menu so that it is perfectly adapted to them.
Targeted segment: a visitor who mainly views the handbag section of your website.
Personalized action: the menu sections of your website are reorganized to highlight the handbag category. During their next visit, the visitor will have easier access to the content that interests them, thanks to a menu tailored to their preferences.
8. PERSONALIZE ACCORDING TO THE WEATHER
Personalization means offering the right product, in the right place, to the right person at the right time.
By using the geolocation of your visitors you can make personalized recommendations, just like a sales advisor in a store.
This is what Allopneus implements on its website in winter.
Targeted segment: visitors to the website’s product pages who are in an area where the temperature is below 7 °C.
Personalized action: these visitors receive a pop-in suggesting they look at winter tire offers.
This personalization aims to reproduce the in-store visitor experience with a sales advisor providing assistance. At the same time the pop-in helps develop trust with the visitors by focusing on the safety aspects of fitting winter tires.
Results: thanks to this campaign, Allopneus saw a 29% increase in the conversion rate on winter tires.
9. PERSONALIZE ACCORDING TO PRODUCTS VIEWED
To adapt even more to your visitors’ purchasing habits, you can personalize the listing of your products.
By prioritizing the products that correspond to an individual buyer’s tastes and budget, you are maximizing your chances of getting them to convert.
Targeted segment: all visitors who show interest in a particular type of product can be targeted.
Personalized action: only products similar to those viewed by the visitor are displayed as recommendations.
10. PERSONALIZE BASED ON PURCHASING POWER
You can also base your recommendations on the purchasing power of your visitors.
Targeted segment: based on the price categories viewed. For example, a visitor who views a specific product category whose price point is under $100.
Personalized action: only the products that fall within the customer’s price range appear on the homepage.
11. USE SOCIAL PROOF TO PERSONALIZE
Social proof is a powerful sociological phenomenon. It’s when an individual is influenced by the behavior and choices of a larger group of people.
Marketers now use social proof as a strategic way of increasing the performance of their on-site marketing actions.
Targeted segment: visitors are targeted based on their geolocation.
Personalized action: the most popular items in the visitor’s geographical area are positioned most prominently.
12. PERSONALIZE YOUR URGENCY MESSAGES
To convince your visitors to take action on your website, you can create a sense of urgency by showing messages that encourage purchases.
Not all visitors respond to the same messages in the same way but thanks to predictive targeting you can identify each visitor’s probability of being receptive to a specific message and only display this version.
Targeted segment: visitors are segmented according to their sensitivity to different messages.
Personalized action: urgency-inducing messages are personalized according to the visitor’s receptiveness and then triggered, encouraging them to buy.
13. PERSONALIZE PROMOTIONS ACCORDING TO VISITOR INTERESTS
To encourage visitors to convert, you can offer promotions connected to their personal browsing journey.
This is what French supermarket chain Auchan has put in place, showing particular promotions to customers who have viewed certain pages on their website.
Targeted segment: the visitors who view the “children”, “childcare”, “garden” and “furniture” pages or who add a product from these categories to their cart.
Personalized action: the visitors considered to be the most interested in these product categories were shown a promotional offer for the section they viewed most for a week when they visited the homepage.
Results: the click through rate on promotional offers has increased by 16% thanks to this campaign, proving that visitors are interested in these personalized offers.
14. ONLY TARGET HESITANT VISITORS
To encourage your visitors to take action on your personal website, you can choose to just push promotions to undecided visitors. This way, you don’t negatively impact the experience of people who don’t intend to buy and you give hesitant visitors an additional reason to purchase.
This is what retailer Cdiscount has done to optimize its promotional budget.
Targeted segment: after studying visitor behavior, Kameleoon’s machine learning algorithm identifies each visitor’s interest in buying and only undecided visitors, i.e. those with moderate interest, are targeted.
Personalized action: a discount coupon is offered to undecided visitors as a final push to make a purchase. That means those who would buy anyway are not offered unnecessary discounts, preserving campaign margins.
Results: thanks to this predictive personalization campaign, Cdiscount has doubled ROI on its promotional campaigns.
RETAIN YOUR VISITORS AND CUSTOMERS
When your visitors become customers, you have to continue your personalization efforts in order to keep them loyal.
Don’t neglect them. Using personalization, you can turn your website into a familiar, even unique, environment which visitors want to return to.
15. PERSONALIZE THE HOMEPAGE TO RETAIN YOUR VISITORS
To make visitors feel at home when they return to your website, you can personalize the content that is available on your homepage. This will ensure the visitor experience remains consistent over time and evolves in line with the visitor’s interests.
Travel brand Routard.com decided to personalize its homepage based on the content viewed by each visitor, offering everyone a unique experience.
Targeted segment: the visitors who view “destination” pages during their visit or have done so during a previous visit.
Personalized action: the homepage is personalized with a sub-menu highlighting the content that corresponds to previous searches (such as a forum, article, guide or photos relating to the destination).
Results: highlighted content has been viewed 4.6 times more thanks to this personalization campaign. Moreover, on average, the visitors exposed to this personalization have spent twice as much time on the highlighted pages, which has extended their visit to the website by an average of 8 minutes and 30 seconds.
16. PERSONALIZE NOTIFICATION ACTIVATION
If you want your visitors to stay loyal, you must ensure that you can communicate with them over time, and notifications are a very good means of staying in contact.
This is why dating website Meetic launched a personalization campaign to encourage visitors to reactivate their notifications.
Targeted segment: visitors who have deactivated a type of notification (activities, events or singles selection) and have browsed one of the pages of these three categories.
Personalized action: a pop-in inviting them to reactivate notifications appears when they are on one of the pages in question. Each visitor is only exposed to the campaign once, even if they looked at several categories.
Results: Meetic is retaining customers by ensuring that communication with them is maintained through notifications. 3% of targeted visitors have reactivated their notifications.
17. PERSONALIZE REMINDERS
It is very common for customers to forget to update their payment details when their bank card is about to expire.
To prevent this kind of passive unsubscription, Le Figaro newspaper has been running a personalization campaign to remind its subscribers to update their payment details.
Targeted segment: subscribers whose bank card is about to expire.
Personalized action: a pop-in appears, inviting subscribers to update their details.
Results: thanks to this personalization campaign, the newspaper has seen a 2% increase in the number of payment details updated on the website.
18. PERSONALIZE OFFERS FOR VIP CUSTOMERS
There’s no overlooking the fact that not all visitors are equal. Although the proportions will of course vary from one website to another, a small share of your visitors most likely contribute a large share of your turnover. You should do everything in your power to retain these customers.
Targeted segment: on the Allopneus website, the most important segment is the “frequent drivers” (those with multiple vehicles, who clock up a lot of miles). After studying visitor behavior on the website, Kameleoon’s algorithm was able to define this segment.
Personalized action: frequent drivers see a special offer appear in the form of a pop-in.
Results: the brand has been able to identify this key visitor group and has seen a 15.7% increase in average cart value.
19. PERSONALIZE THE EXPERIENCE OF LOYAL CUSTOMERS
To retain your visitors, there’s nothing like keeping them informed of good deals and other information of interest.
Rakuten personalizes its signed-up visitors’ experience to keep them up-to-date with the latest products and deals. This is a very valuable strategy for retaining visitors since they are encouraged to stay signed into their customer account to avoid missing out on any deals.
Targeted segment: visitors signed into their customer account, based on their website browsing history.
Personalized action: “news flashes” are displayed at the top of the customer’s account area. These may announce price drops, flash sales or other relevant information.
Results: Rakuten has seen a 20% click rate on personalized news flashes and an increase in purchases, demonstrating the campaign’s positive impact on customer retention.
REACTIVATE YOUR INACTIVE CUSTOMERS AND VISITORS
Unfortunately, some of your visitors or customers will abandon your brand or leave your website without converting.
You can implement personalized actions to convince them to come back or even to stay on your website
20. PERSONALIZE REACTIVATION EMAILS
Email is a preferred channel for bringing a known visitor back to your website. The challenge here is to remind them about a purchase they were about to make, offer them similar products to those they’ve viewed online and bring them back to the website, where you can personalize your marketing actions in real-time based on their behavior.
This is what retailer Auchan has been doing.
Targeted segment: known visitors who have left the website before checking out their shopping cart.
Personalized action: an email is sent to remind the visitor about the contents of their cart, along with personalized recommendations.
Results: A larger percentage of visitors return to the site and complete their purchases. Research shows that a personalized email makes visitors 87% more likely to check-out previously abandoned carts.
21. PERSONALIZE VISITORS’ DEPARTURE FROM THE WEBSITE
The visitors who add items to a cart on your website are not always logged-in or known to you. In the case of these anonymous visitors there’s no way to remind them about their abandoned cart by email.
Targeted segment: visitors about to leave your website.
Personalized action: to convince visitors to finalize their purchases before leaving, a pop-in is triggered as they are about to quit the page. This is the final message addressed to these visitors, so it needs to include persuasive arguments, such as a discount code or free shipping.
This list will prove useful to you as you implement your own personalization strategy. And don’t forget that each of these examples can be fully tailored to help you meet your own goals.
The most important thing is to constantly test new experimentations on your website, to continuously optimize your visitors’ experience and thus deliver greater conversions and increased revenues.
