Entrepreneur: 3 Easy Website-Personalization Tricks That Will Boost Your Conversion Rates

According to a study released by Janrain, 74 percent of online consumers surveyed said they were frustrated with websites that show content in the form of ads, offers and promotions that aren’t related to their personal interests. What this means is that you’re alienating your site visitors every time you let an irrelevant offer pop up on their screen.

When your content isn’t personalized, you neither make a sale nor develop a good rapport with your target audience.

And that mistake is understandable. But it’s also avoidable: To get your online marketing right, you need to customize your website in a way that reflects your target audience’s interests. Science supports this move: Research reveals that 40 percent of those surveyed said they would buy from retailers that personalized the shopping experience consistently across all channels.

Personalizing your website will create customized experiences for your visitors inspired by their needs and desires. That way, you can foster a deeper relationship between your company and your audience, and boost sales.

So, how do you actually implement personalization?

Although studies say that 77 percent of businesses agree that real-time content personalization is crucial, 60 percent struggle to implement it. They shouldn’t give up the effort: The boost that personalization gives your website might be what makes the major difference for your business.

And the good news is, it’s surprisingly easy to launch calls to action, widgets and other conversion-oriented design elements to reach different site visitors. You can actually target them depending on their location, devices they use, past visits to your site and any number of other factors.

“It’s a great opportunity for your clients to run special promotions triggered by a date, time, visitor location and more,” Aaron Pitre of Duda wrote on his blog. “For example, a site visitor from Chicago could trigger a notification for a special, one-day offer. If your client has planned a series of promotions or sales throughout the year, it’s easy to schedule them all at once.”

There are additional ways to increase your conversions, with website personalization. All you need are some small tweaks, and you’ll be able to sit back and watch your conversion rates increase. Here are three simple but effective tricks to start raising your conversion rates  today.

1.   Target opt-ins based on category or tags.

Most blog content is filed according to category or tags. This helps blog visitors to have quick access to valuable content based on a category or a tag. These categories and tags subtly segment blog visitors according to their interests. This makes it easier for the generated leads to sign up to the email list, and get converted.

For example, a case study by Authority Hacker observed that the HealthAmbition blog Authority Hacker was working on had a “juicing” category that was receiving a considerable number of visits. In a bid to get more email list sign-ups, the marketers used a simple opt-in with a free juicing ebook as a lead magnet in the juicing category.

That simple trick resulted in 821 conversions, with a conversion rate of over 4 percent with that pop-up.

The lesson here was that most blog content is “filed” according to categories or tags. This helps blog visitors gain quick access to valuable content based on the category or tag they’re interested in.

2. Use product recommendation engines.

Ever wondered how ecommerce sites tend to read your mind on the type of products you’d like to buy? Product recommendation engines are what you see on Amazon and other ecommerce websites.  A product recommendation engine is a filtering tool that uses algorithms and data it gathers from your behavior online to personalize the kind of products you get to see on the website.

At Home in the Country, a U.K. gift site, wanted to increase its sales and deepen its connection with their online visitors. To achieve this, the company set up product recommendations which appeared directly below the main product image.

Each time visitors clicked on a product, these potential clients would see a product that matched their preferences, thus giving them  only content that piqued their interest. This trick increased At Home in The Country’s revenue by 13 percent.

3. Set up an effective remarketing or retargeting campaign,

Watchfinders, one of the largest watch dealers in the U.K., got impressive results from its remarketing campaign. Its conversion rates went up by 350 percent and the company was able to make an ROI of 1,300 percent! That means that for every $1 it spent, it  earned $13 for the trouble.

Watchfinders did this by first hiring Periscopix to help improve its sales. Periscopix was able to achieve those results by doing a comprehensive audit of Watchfinders’s website visitors. A case study revealed that what Periscopix did was to understand the type of site visitors Watchfinder had and how those visitors interacted with the watch dealer’s ecommerce platform.

Using Google Analytics to track the activities of those website visitors, Periscopix grouped the audience into different segments. Using that data, it created ads specifically tailored to appeal to each segment.

Market to an audience of one.

Improving your conversion rates is not as complicated as you think. In fact, it all starts with understanding the concept that potential customers value only what they’re interested in. And if you’re able to channel content or products that are specially tailored to the unique segments of your target audience, those moves will help sustain your potential clients’ interest long enough to get them to convert.