A comprehensive website personalization guide for B2B marketers.
Concepts referenced in this article, defined.
Run rigorous A/B tests and personalize every visit on Shopify or any storefront โ no engineers required.
A website is one of the most valued assets of a business. That's fair to say, because the number of online businesses has surged in recent decades and a large number of offline businesses are switching to online. Because of this, a website is nothing short of a store where new and old visitors are often passing in and out. One factor that has increased the potential of websites to make sales is data. The storage of data across the internet and devices holds huge potential for making sales. And so personalization in the digital space has proven to be effective, and e-commerce is an example of this. However, for B2B and other businesses like Edtech too, the potential is high and it's being explored.
The digital space is constantly evolving, and it is also getting crowded. More than anything, people's attention span on the internet has shrunk. They want to get information quickly and are used to 'instant gratification'. They are also used to personalization at the browser level. Whenever a visitor lands on a website, he starts looking for info, and if the messages on the website can't connect with him, he is quick to leave and go to another website because there's no shortage of information. Your competitors quickly come into the picture when the visitor is unsatisfied with the message, info, or service descriptions he sees on your website. So it's important to have highly relevant messages on the website and to catch his attention through personalization.
If you're new to website personalization, you might have to understand a few concepts that come before it. Website personalization as a concept developed recently. However, at the foundational level, there are many concepts one needs to understand to fully grasp what website personalization is. Most importantly, one should know what website experience means. So let's start with website experience.
Since a website is like an online store, the experience a visitor has on the website (whether new or old) is equal to the experience one has on the offline store, which consists of many different factors. On a website it's about the "path" one takes. Starting from a particular landing page or home page, one goes to various other pages, clicks and downloads, fills up forms, checks out or reads blogs, clicks the share button, and so on. The path he takes consists of his experience.
Another point in understanding website experience is the use of the Customer Data Platform and how it affects what we see on the internet. As mentioned earlier, personalization on the internet happens at two levels: browser and device level, and website level. This happens because of data storage in the platforms called Customer Data Platforms, or CDP.
How can you use CDP to improve the website experience for each visitor each time? How can you increase the relevance of the message, visuals, and paths he takes on the website? When you answer these questions, what you get is website personalization. Once your website integrates with a website personalization platform, you have the technology to edit the content of the website or even change the images and create a new variation of the webpage. Once the content is set, the user adds rules that determine what each audience segment will see.
The two levels of personalization: outbound and inbound. Inbound is mainly for segments of audience, which means you divide the visitors on the basis of industry, demographics, geographical location, number of visits, and also the previous behavior/actions taken on the website. If you have the CRM integrated, the personalization element, i.e. name and designation, can also be picked up and displayed on the webpage. Now comes outbound personalization. In this, you're targeting a specific person and reaching out to him and creating a unique variation of the webpage with personalization and customization. In other words, you create a personalized pitch for him to prompt him to take a particular action. You want him to reach a specific predetermined goal.
To understand both types of website personalization, let's throw light on the role of the Customer Relations Management system, also known as CRMS, namely HubSpot, Salesforce, and others. These platforms store the data regarding your leads and prospects. Once they are added in the CRM, they're referred to as contacts. You can also update regarding your last interaction with them and when's the next call scheduled and further notes. When the CRM integrates with a website personalization platform, the result is that you can configure settings/rules so that the first name, last name, designation, or company name or any other revenue can be picked up and displayed.
If the visitor is among your contacts in the CRM, then he will be able to view his personalized elements like name, etc. However, let's consider a visitor (from both outbound and inbound campaign) who's not in the CRM. He will be able to see the edited version of the webpage. Let's understand this with respect to outbound campaigns for an Edtech company. You are selling digital marketing courses to two segments: college students and working professionals. Variation1 is for students and variation2 is for professionals. There will be two unique links for the page. The link for v1, you can share on the platform where you will find the students group, and likewise for v2. Each of the links has a compelling message to each group with relevant information. Personalization cannot be applied here since the details from the CRM are not fetched. However, at the browser level, CDP will have some info stored which can be fetched in order to showcase some amount of customization and also tracking at the website analytics level.
Marketers are mostly familiar with the practice of A/B testing, which is the practice of creating two variations of the website for two or more audience segments and then tracking the results. If there are n number of variations to the webpages, then it is called multivariate testing, which is similar to customizing or personalizing the webpage. However, this practice can be replaced by website personalization itself because it gives all and more value over A/B testing. But there can be certain use cases where A/B testing is a better option, which means you only need two variants.
The challenges in executing website personalization are technological. Previously, editing content required code changes, which required the intervention of coders. Because of this, for marketers or sales teams to change the content for various audience segments or for each visitor was a task that depended on the tech team's help. However, this has changed with the introduction of no-code technology.
No-code website personalization technology removes the need to make code changes for editing website content. So if you're using a no-code website personalization platform, then once you integrate it with your website, your marketers or anybody in the team gets the access to make the necessary edits and also to track the results, i.e. detailed analytics (explained later in this article) about the person who visited and his actions.
Both B2C and ecommerce website personalization differ from B2B because the sales process is quite different here. B2B has long sales cycles and multiple decisions, and today most products start with an extensively long free trial before switching to the paid version. Especially in the booming SaaS industry, the communication can extend for a long time before the final subscription is sealed. Given the facts about B2B customer acquisitions, it's important to engage the prospects over a period of time with the relevant message, not just at the sales level but the website level as well. However, what is commonly noticed is that sales people cannot transpire the personalized messaging onto the website, which helps in further personalization. This can be done with an easy-to-use no-code website personalization that even SDRs can use easily to edit and personalize the website content.
Data is an asset that can be put to work with personalization. In personalization, there are two parts to the usage of data: pre and post personalization. You decide on the basis of the available data and determine what personalization has to be implemented. This is the pre-personalization part. Post personalization aims at deriving conclusions by analyzing the results of personalization, which consist of metrics like the actions taken on the webpages, the scrolled pages, journey explorer, clicks, channels, browsers, and devices.
With this data, one can make validated conclusions about the behavior and preferences of various audience segments and put together a plan for follow-ups. This data can be fed into the CRM, and that will assist in further communication. The role of data, its analytics, and insights matters in the personalization exercise. These form the feedback loop for all the experiments you carry out. In fact, without these feedbacks, you cannot call these experiments because you won't have any results to check the outcomes. Measuring metrics from the experiments and the quality of these measurements, for example, how in-depth you can get the results, is important. With this, you can make the necessary adjustments and updates. Once you study the pattern, this will constitute the data driven decision making for the next one and also in general (in order to analyze behavior and buying patterns of various segments of audience).
With website personalization, marketers can optimize the revenue from all marketing campaigns, both organic and paid: from social media campaigns, webinars and other events, email campaigns, paid ads, and so on.
A visitor interacts with a company across channels, both offline and online. It can be through social media paid ads, emails, company pages, website blogs and ebooks and video materials, and additionally an executive from the company. Across all these channels, the interaction of the visitor should be personalized to create his unique experience, helping him to form a rapport with the company and also feel understood by the company. For example, when a prospective customer views an ad and comes to the website page, the message in the ad can be carried forward to the corresponding page and relevant message that will attract him to the exact product that he is interested in.
Customizing each customer touch point is the key to personalization. These touch points include
a. In-line content
b. Banners/Hero Image
c. CTA Buttons
d. Pop-ups
e. Survey Questions
f. Call outs
e. Pricing page
This is where a highly efficient website personalization software makes all the difference. With features like an in-built visual editor, analytics, and a visitor journey tracking system, a website personalization tool helps in crafting dynamic elements across the page such as Call-to-action buttons, pop-ups, surveys, and Hero images depending on various factors such as which stage of the sales funnel he is in and also the number of visits he's made.
For example, in the case of an Edtech website, a visitor who is checking out, let's say, Data Science courses for the third time requires a different nudge to make the decision. This can be in the form of a price reduction or 'talk to our academic counselor to clear doubts'. On the other hand, someone who checks out different courses on the website can be directed to a catalog of courses and directed to a survey which helps to understand his course preference. ****
It's true that marketers at every level understand the importance of text and visuals in engaging customers. However, as the latest in technology keeps rolling out, there is an increasing scope of personalization, and that requires an in-depth understanding of customer behavior at various points of interaction.
Persuasive content is all about storytelling with the help of text and visuals that attracts, hits the personal note, engages, creates curiosity/interest, and prompts action. This strategy is best applied when you have personalized segments on the website that have higher convincing power.
The analytics from website personalization can be analyzed to measure the effectiveness of the techniques. This is a reliable insight into your customer's behavior and purchasing trends in the industry that serves as a treasure trove of data which can be used further.
a. These results enable goal tracking as well as setting newer goals.
b. No more 'guess work' in targeting customers. Instead you have data and statistics backing your efforts.
c. Statistics claim that websites that used personalization software saw a spike in conversion up to 40%.
d. Website personalization impacts not just conversions but other tangible metrics such as customer retention, remarketing, and customer loyalty.
e. This encourages a data driven approach and decision making in customer acquisition.
There is unique buyer intent behind every SaaS sale. Are they already using a similar product and are looking for a better alternative? What are the existing integrations they have? What are their requirements related to company size and work? Personalizing for SaaS customers can be complex. However, it can be simplified many times over with a system that enables easy experimenting and result tracking. Customfit.ai, a software that creates smooth integrations and provides result-oriented, data driven implementation of conversion optimization strategies, can help scale SaaS businesses.
Usability and results are the foundation of a good website personalization tool. Personalization is only one part of these platforms. There are additional features that assist and support the personalization with data, website analytics, and alerts and tracking depending on the platform you're using. When you choose a platform, the most important thing to consider is ease of use. It should enable your team to make data-backed decisions without affecting any other aspects of the website like SEO, security, and page loading speed.