How to create a personalised website journey for better user experience

The shopping experience is becoming less human-centric, as digital commerce reigns supreme over brick-and-mortar stores.

Modern digital consumers still desire a personalised experience, even when solely interacting with a brand online. They want tailored products, services, and offers with a personal touch and human-centric element intact.

Defining website personalisation  

Website personalisation is the art of tailoring a user's digital journey based on their preferences, behaviours, and demographics.   

Personalised website experiences have become a cornerstone of the ecommerce customer journey.  Personalised experiences can deliver content, product recommendations, and offers for each visitor by using customer journey analytics, data insights and implementing customer journey mapping tools.  

This approach not only improves user engagement but also forms a deeper connection between the user and the brand. Website personalisation tailors content to each user, like suggesting products from past interactions and using locations. This creates a smoother experience to help increase conversion rates, customer satisfaction, and brand loyalty. 

Personalised website journeys empower users and make them feel understood and valued. This results in a seamless and memorable online experience that drives sales, brand advocacy and marketing strategies.  

How to create a data-driven personalisation strategy  

Devising a data-driven personalisation strategy requires a thorough understanding of your target audience and their behaviours.   

Collecting and analysing user data like demographics, browsing history, purchase patterns, and engagement metrics is essential to form a personalisation strategy. This data serves as the basis for segmenting users into distinct groups based on their common characteristics or preferences.   

Utilising advanced analytics tools and machine learning algorithms helps to identify invaluable insights and accurately predict future user behaviour. Once you define the segments, you can personalise content and experiences to each group's unique needs and interests.   

Continuous testing and optimisation are necessary to refine the personalisation strategy to ensure the any website personalisation strategy remains effective, efficient and relevant.   

By applying data effectively, brands can deliver hyper-personalised experiences for users to harbour stronger connections and drive tangible results.  

Here's a list of key steps to follow to create a data-driven strategy:

1. Define Objectives: Clearly outline the goals and objectives that you want to achieve with your data-driven strategy. These objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound.  

2. Identify Data Sources: Determine the types of data sources that are fundamental to your goals. This includes customer journey analytics, website analytics, social media metrics, sales data, market research, and third-party data sources.  

3. Collect Data: Implement mechanisms to collect data from various sources. This ensures that data is accurate, reliable, and compliant with relevant regulations (such as GDPR).  

4. Clean and Organise Data: Cleanse and preprocess the collected data to remove duplicates, errors, and inconsistencies. Organise the data into a structured format suitable for easy analysis.  

5. Analyse Data: Utilise data analysis techniques such as descriptive analytics, diagnostic analytics, predictive analytics, and prescriptive analytics for insights and patterns from the data.  

6. Interpret Insights: Interpret the insights obtained from data analysis to gain a deeper understanding of customer behaviours, market trends, and opportunities for improvement.  

7. Develop Strategies: Based on the insights obtained, develop data-driven strategies and initiatives to achieve your objectives. Align your strategies with your business goals and supported by actionable recommendations.  

8. Implement and Monitor: Apply the strategies across relevant departments or functions within your business. Continuously monitor the performance of these strategies and iterate based on any new data and feedback.  

9. Measure and Evaluate: Establish KPIs to measure the effectiveness of your strategy. Regularly compare performance against these KPIs and adjust accordingly to optimise outcomes.  

Identifying different customer types   

When it’s time to map and create a customer journey, firstly analyse the diverse array of customer types. This is necessary to create the unique experiences that establish the brand – consumer relationship.  

From identifying different customer segments, brands can tailor their web personalisation strategies to address the unique needs, preferences, and behaviours of targeted user groups. This segmentation allows for the creation of more targeted and relevant content which helps improve the overall user experience. 

Take a clothing retailer for example. It may distinguish between urban creatives seeking trends and busy parents seeking practical outfits. Whereas an outdoor adventure brand may target thrill-seekers as opposed to nature enthusiasts.  

Psychographic insights into values and lifestyles help to enhance personalisation strategies.   

By tracking behaviours and engagement, brands can segment users into loyal advocates. Or they can even cultivate an entirely new customer base and subsequently adapt all their experiences accordingly.   

Streamline and segment user data 

Analysing user data, consumer behaviours, and segmenting audiences are key steps required to make personalised website journeys.  

Study consumer behaviours to gain valuable insights into the motivations, preferences, and pain points of target audiences. It helps shape tailored experiences that address specific needs and desires throughout each stage of the user journey.  

Audience segmentation benefits this process by categorising users into distinct groups based on shared characteristics, behaviours, or demographics.  

Mapping the perfect customer journey   

Mapping the perfect ecommerce customer journey through website personalisation requires a calculated understanding of user segments. 

Mapping involves thorough research to identify the various touchpoints and stages that users experience during a website interaction. This involves analysing user demographics, browsing behaviour, past interactions, and feedback to gain insights into motivations and pain points. 

Brands need to analyse the user journey from awareness to conversion and beyond. They can then create unique experiences to seamlessly guide and encourage users throughout each stage of the sales funnel. 

Once you map out the customer journey, start implementing personalisation techniques to deliver targeted content at each touchpoint. This involves configuring landing pages based on the user's characteristics and behaviours.   

Continuous testing, tracking, and optimisation are essential to refining and perfecting the personalised customer journey. Brands need to measure key performance indicators such as click-through rates, conversion rates, time spent on-site, and bounce rates. They can then evaluate the effectiveness of their personalisation efforts and identify key areas for improvement. 

Initiate iterative ecommerce optimisation, A/B and multivariate testing. Brands can adapt and scale their website personalisation strategy to meet user needs through frequent testing and optimisation. 

How customer journey mapping tools can aid personalisation strategies.  

Customer journey mapping tools provide insights into user interactions across digital touchpoints, helping identify pain points and opportunities for personalisation. Brands can refine digital experiences to fulfil user needs to help increase engagement and conversion rates. However, it requires tools to collect data on user behaviour and preferences at each stage of the customer journey. 

Examples of customer journey mapping tools include:  

• HubSpot  

• Salesforce Customer Journey Analytics  

• Adobe Experience Cloud  

• UXPressia  

• Clarabridge CX Analytics  

• Smaply  

• Hotjar  

• Touchpoint Dashboard  

• UserZoom  

• CXMap  

Take advantage of automation  

Automation plays an important role in web personalisation, allowing brands to deliver tailored experiences to users at scale while maintaining efficiency and accuracy. Automation tools and technology like CRM systems collect, analyse, and action large amounts of user data in real-time. 

This enables agile and dynamic adjustments to website content, product recommendations, and communications based on individual user preferences, behaviours, and interactions. 

A key benefit of automation in web personalisation is the ability to rapidly deliver relevant content and offers without manual intervention. An online store can use automation to suggest products based on each user's interests, buying habits, and preferences. This is done by analysing their browsing and purchase history. 

Brands can keep users engaged by updating recommendations based on their behaviour, like new purchases or interests. This ensures that users see the most relevant content whenever they visit the website. 

Automation enables brands to implement sophisticated targeting and segmentation strategies, allowing them to tailor website experiences to specific user segments or personas. An online travel agency can use automation to identify users who are interested in beach holidays. They can then show these users destination suggestions, hotel deals, and activities automatically. 

Automated technology is widely accessible to nearly every commerce platform. Make easier to read maybe: Small businesses can use automation or AI to make selling and customer service easier for both consumers and other businesses. 

However, it’s key to integrate automation in the appropriate setting and retain a human element of service. 

The benefits of automation 

• Increased conversions rate 📈  

• Increased customer engagement 🤝  

• Enhanced customer insights 🔍  

• Better customer / user experience 🤩  

• Targeted marketing campaigns 🎯  

• Greater ROI (return-on-investment) 💰  

• Optimised web performance 🔋  

• Effective lead generation ⚡️  

• Increased customer retention 🧲  

• Insights on how to grow Customer lifetime value 🌿  

Pave a path to purchase with personalised landing pages  

Crafting individual landing page experiences is crucial for providing tailored user journeys that resonate with each visitor. 

Layer data to your advantage

Rapidly scale and adjust content and messaging by manipulating data layers based on user demographics, behaviour, and preferences. 

Businesses can make landing pages that address unique desires and interests of various audience segments, enhancing relevance and engagement.  

Streamline site navigation across all funnels

Presenting a streamlined site navigation is crucial to guide users through tailored landing pages.

Brands need to make navigation simple and guide users to take specific actions. This should happen at every stage of the process. Users should be prompted to take desired actions regardless of where they are in the process. 

Users in the awareness stage may prefer exploratory navigation, but users in the consideration or decision stages may prefer a linear pathway towards conversion.  

The power of pop-ups  

Pop-up forms are another effective tool for personalising landing page (or product page) experiences. Strategically time pop-ups based on user behaviour or exit intent. This can effectively deliver targeted offers, promotions, or subscription opportunities that align with users’ interests and goals.

Pop-up forms need to be seamlessly integrated into a landing page's layout. This helps to maintain a smooth user experience.  

Optimising CTAs within personalised landing page layouts  

Optimising and configuring landing pages are essential for accommodating users at various stages of the funnel. 

Users in the early stages may require more educational content and visuals to sustain their interest. But users closer to conversion may prefer concise information and prominent CTAs to facilitate decision-making. 

Adapt and optimise layout elements such as content sections, images, and call to action placement. This ensures maximum impact and effectiveness in driving desired outcomes. 

Great landing pages are key to your sales and marketing funnel. Being the first point of contact, they grab attention and start building a relationship. Personalisation helps establish a long-term relationship and keeps customers coming back. 

See the power of personalisation strategies for yourself  

Web personalisation significantly improves the user experience. By integrating automated processes within your architecture, it can yield impactful results for your business and your digital customers. 

It's common to struggle with high bounce rates or friction across the user journey. But a website personalisation strategy could be a major factor in reducing those obstacles that impede purchases. 

Personalised experiences also improve web design and usability. By adapting content and design elements to suit users' devices, companies optimise the site for seamless interaction. 

A website personalisation strategy can boost engagement, improve cart conversion rates, and streamline their internal efficiencies. Plus, it creates satisfied customers who keep coming back for more.