This week we will be discussing how you can get started with Personalisation Testing. This is part of a series of blog posts which started with Conversion Packages.
A lot of websites already use personalisation, but it doesn’t mean everyone knows how it can be used or even built.
This post is for anyone who would like to know a little bit about how to get started and how it works.
Examples of Personalisation:
Websites use personalisation for a whole range of reasons, for example:
- Companies may want to Welcome you back to the site and feel a valued repeat visitor / customer, or if they know your name state ‘Hi Katie!’
- A travel site may want to show you the weather of the destination you are looking at and for the time of year you are looking to book it. This is personalised to your search criteria
- Or a website may want to show you relatable products to what you are currently looking at
- Or even provide you with a voucher or product review that will keep you committed to staying on their website for longer
Why Use it?
From the very few examples above, I hope you can appreciate the power and in some cases the complexity of personalisation and start to get an understanding of why companies use it, and also why customers don’t mind it.
The tailored experience should help customer usability, make the relevant information available at the right time.
Its generally accepted that there is a demand and increased expectation of visitors wanting personalised content. There are some statistics and reports out there to back this up. But essentially with so much information out there – visitors just want to see what is relevant to them. https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-77/Accenture-Pulse-Survey.pdf
91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who recognise, remember, and provide relevant offers and recommendations.
83% of consumers are willing to share their data to enable a personalised experience.
Where to start?
In my opinion to get started you need to know what you want to personalise and if you have the relevant data and information to make it happen.
For example, if I wanted to add a Welcome Back (name) message on my website, I would need to know:
- Has the user visited the site before?
- What is their name?
Firstly, you would need to set up some tracking if not already in place to monitor repeat visits to the site (New or Returning).
Next you would then need to capture their name when entered either within a login, registration, or checkout section. (With any personal information you need to be careful with where you store it!)
What Next?
If you have all of the relevant data / information that you need for the personalised experience you will also need to consider, how often this is shown to users. A ‘Welcome Back’ message, for example, may be overkill if you have users coming to your website a few times a day.
You will also need to consider the design and how you will present your personalised message or experience to your customers.
What can I do with it once it’s live?
Next is the fun part!
When testing personalisation you get to track the performance of your implementation to see if it is performing well, if not you can keep re-testing it, or if it does work let your creativity run wild!
If you would like to discuss this in more detail or talk through what would be feasible on your website please get in touch!
