Using personalized website development techniques, website owners can offer a unique and satisfying user experience for all their visitors. According to a recent survey, about 91% of the customers surveyed say that they like to shop with brands and companies that offer better discounts and tailor-made recommendations. Additionally, 70% of customers surveyed stated that they like to shop exclusively from the retail stores and websites that understand them personally.
With the advancement of technology, web users regularly receive tailor-made and personalized content as per individual preferences, and it has become the norm across the web as part of a positive user experience. Website personalization can be the cornerstone for greater growth and audience expansion when done correctly. About 80% of the companies have seen exponential growth after implementing website personalization and seen revenues boost by 15%.
All media brands strive to achieve a 1-1 website personalization strategy, and though the concept might sound simple, executing it within your platform can be challenging. Taking the wrong approach to website personalization can be harmful to your company and end up harming your retention and conversion rates.
In this article, we will be discussing a few things to avoid in website personalization. If you are wondering where to get the best website personalization strategies, you can also read this article by Viafoura.
Mistakes to avoid during website personalization
It’s important to be able to identify the best practices of website personalization, but it’s equally necessary to understand what can have a negative impact on your efforts to customize your user experience. Here are some mistakes you must avoid at all costs.
Not updating your website data
The first thing you need to do to create a personalized campaign is to align your website data with your goals and ensure that all the information is up to date. For that, you need to ask yourself a set of questions:
- Can I make use of additional data, or is there any data left that I am not fully leveraging?
- What kind of information do I already have on my website?
- Where is all the data stored, and is it accessible?
Once you have successfully assessed all the essential data and separated them, it is time to ensure that it is up to date and beneficial to your efforts. For example, if you plan to spotlight the premium members of your website and encourage them to use their reward points, you need to ensure that you are collecting the correct data points for each of these members to obtain meaningful insights.
Without updated customer information, there is a considerable risk that you might offer the wrong type of content to the most loyal customers you have. These premium customers are your biggest brand influencers, and they are the last people you would want to disappoint with a poor customer experience.
Not maximizing your customer data
According to research, 73% of the customers like to buy products from brands that can offer tailor-made experiences. Your customer expects much more than a simple “Hey, (Customer’s name)”. So if the website owner cannot maximize the customer data, the personalization strategy might not work.
The simplest way to enhance your personalized emails and text is using real-time behaviour data. This data can be easily obtained from your website by visiting the most popular and recommended products that are selling fast.
Not updating your website personalization techniques
Like all parts of customer experience, you are always advised to evaluate and update your personalization strategies. Most companies develop a basic personalization strategy, and while moving on, they do not care to update it. With the ever-changing customer trends and increase in demands, companies and website owners must create a unique personalization strategy to connect to their customer base.
Bad timing
No matter what type of personalized campaign you develop with exclusive tailor-made data, poor timing can heavily impact the customer experience. There are several ways in which proper timing plays a role in personalization.
Time of the day
Contact is extremely important for personalized text messages or push notifications. The correct time of sending a text or a notification will entirely depend on your audience, and it will vary from one person to another. Therefore you must group your customers according to the right time frames throughout the day.
The customer’s position in the funnel
You don’t want to send a basic tutorial to a 5-year-old customer and obviously, sending first-time buyer offers meant for existing customers is a bad idea. Avoid launching promotional offers or sending out notifications before mapping out your customer’s stage in the final system.
Stay updated with local events
You have to always stay updated with the local events like natural disasters or other calamities. Avoid sending out notifications or promotional offers during major news events which are relevant to the customers you are targeting.
Outdated technology and website design
Website personalization has to cover all the channels used by the customer. A specific customer can have an excellent personalized experience with your mobile application. However, if the personalization is not smooth enough and does not continue through all the channels like desktop website, mobile, and live chat, your personalization strategies might fail.
Most companies have strict regulations where customer data segments are separated between departments. This becomes frustrating for the customer as they have to repeat their issues every time, and therefore they have an unsatisfactory user experience.
Some marketing companies might have only a few updated parts of the technology, and therefore other systems cannot handle the modern website personalization efforts. Therefore digital transformation is necessary, and also you need to break down internal silos to offer strong digital solutions.
Not pushing beyond surface-level personalization
Website personalization requires correct and exact information, so you must avoid guessing what your customer wants. Only making surface-level assumptions about your customers can often lead you to incorrect personalization efforts, and therefore it might offend your customers.
For example, making general assumptions about preferences based on age and gender (Men over 30 like sports) is never a good idea.
The best personalization strategies require you to understand your customers. Therefore one-dimensional ideas based on limited data must be avoided. All customers are different, and they cannot be categorized into one box based on their age or gender.
So you need to avoid relying on demographic data and start focusing on behavioural data. It is always advised to use multidimensional personalization strategies that include geographic and behavioural data. This is necessary to match the customers and send them the correct messages.
Endnote
Website personalization is an excellent tool for offering the best user experience. However, constant work, careful planning and vigilance are necessary. It is not only important to align the website personalization strategies with your business goals, but you also need to ensure that you are offering the best customer experience.