Visibility

E-commerce marketers, Web publishers and lead generation sites spend plenty of time and resources personalizing their external marketing efforts, and for good reason. Personalization works. Yahoo!, for example, found that advertisers could easily boost click through rates by including users’ search terms in the ad’s copy. According to Yahoo!, customers are 50 percent more likely to click on ads that include the keyword. Personalized ads simply perform better than general ads.

Unfortunately, with so much attention going into off-site efforts, marketers often overlook on-site content personalization. While this may happen for any number of reasons, including IT resistance or a lack of resources, any successful efforts to convert traffic on-site will drive revenue growth and user satisfaction, making off-site efforts more effective. As marketers communicate with site visitors on a more personal level, visitors become more engaged and more likely to perform the desired conversion event. The more personalized the elements of a site become, the more those odds increase.

The path to personalization

Although a true one-to-one experience, in which the marketer serves an entirely personalized Web site to each specific visitor, is not practical today, marketers aim to get closer and closer. So why should marketers strive for the ideal of one-to-one content personalization? Personalizing elements on-site creates an optimal experience, which builds loyalty and increases the likelihood of conversion, ultimately improving ROI.

When it comes to personalization, there is a whole spectrum of ways in which marketers can optimize their site -- from A/B and multivariate testing which randomly serves content to specific groups to determine the most appropriate, to segment targeting which serves unique content to predefined groups, to real-time automated persona targeting which delivers content to personas determined by sophisticated algorithms. Each step advances personalization efforts and takes marketers closer to the one-to-one ideal, and with each step, marketers increase the likelihood that a site visitor will carry out the conversion event.

Refining for one, refining for all

Direct marketers and catalogers have been using A/B and multivariate testing offline for many years, and it has drastically improved the effectiveness of their efforts. In its simplest form, by mailing two or more different supplements to select groups, marketers could determine which one was the most effective promotion based on response rates. By taking these principles, which have proven effective in the offline world, and applying them online, marketers can achieve the same success, creating big dividends for e-businesses.

A/B and multivariate testing typically optimizes site pages on a one-to-all basis. This enables marketers to test content developed for any specific element of a Web site. These tests randomly serve content to each visitor in the test, offering up different messages, layouts or other variables and measuring the outcomes to identify which best resonates with all visitors. Once a test has been completed, findings can be applied more broadly to increase the odds of a conversion event. As marketers test more elements and implement more findings, the odds of a completed conversion event increase further.

A/B and multivariate tests can be applied to any part of a site to optimize countless features. A marketer might choose to test the copy on a landing page, different versions of a specific promotion, or the color or placement of a button. The possibilities are only limited by the elements of the site and the marketer’s imagination.

2CheckOut.com, a leading e-commerce solutions provider and reseller serving more than 6,000 merchants, increased its annual revenue by more than $10 million dollars on a 4.87 percent lift in conversion rates. 2CheckOut.com achieved these results by performing A/B tests on different aspects of their shopping cart and employing those findings to modify and improve the user checkout experience and determine the ideal shopping cart structure.

Once a test has been run, the marketer can look at the data to determine which option (or options) has proven most effective in increasing the number of times the conversion event is completed. Marketers can take personalization further by applying segments to their tests.

Catering to groups

Applying segments to an A/B or multivariate test gets more specific and optimizes a site on a one-to-group basis by further personalizing the visitor experience for segments pre-defined by the marketer. Marketers choose to segment visitors in a variety of ways, such as geographic targeting, the time of day or week a user visits the site, whether the visitor is a first-time versus repeat customer, the keyword or referral source, or a host of other variables.

A marketer may choose to segment visitors by their referral source, for example. Doing so allows marketers to create a “bridge of consistency.” Consider a popular national retailer with an online search portfolio utilizing 9,000 keywords. Each of those 9,000 keywords has at least one corresponding referring URL. Knowing what brought a searcher to a site gives marketers the ability to further tailor their on-site experience accordingly, keeping the visitor more engaged -- from their initial search, to the ad they click, to their arrival at a landing page, to the completion of the conversion event. Making these adjustments delivers the visitor a more relevant experience.

Implementing A/B and multivariate tests and applying segmentation helps marketers move closer to a truly personalized experience but requires an increasing amount of time and analysis from the marketer. With automation however, a marketer can inch ever closer to the one-to-one ideal, while reducing work and resource requirements.

Speaking to the individual

Automated persona targeting optimizes a site on a one-to-persona basis, by automatically serving the best available content to different personas in real-time. Personas enable marketers to learn about a visitor’s behavior so that they can better personalize the experience for future visitors who share the same characteristics. Sophisticated technologies now enable marketers to automate the personalization process, relying almost fully on algorithms to build these personas. Algorithms can track and analyze information and take action much more quickly and efficiently than a person could do manually. This allows the marketer to think more strategically about acquiring and converting traffic, while the technology tracks, analyzes and acts on the details.

One example of the tracking capabilities is the referring URL. In the case of the marketer managing a 9,000 keyword portfolio, time and resource constraints make this difficult to track, analyze and manage manually. Just like they need bid management systems to effectively manage their search campaigns, many look to automation on site-side personalization efforts to help them excel and operate more strategically. The algorithm can recognize the URL and keep track of the user’s behavior. The algorithm learns and determines what to serve future visitors referred by any specific keyword. The marketer no longer needs to do the analysis but can instead focus on the creative execution to further drive ROI.

While leading applications can automate the personalization process, drawbacks do exist. Personalization is still limited by marketers, as the degree of personalization for each area of the site is determined by the amount of content the marketer puts into the platform. For example, if a marketer inputs ten pieces of content, that content will be shared across all personas. If a marketer can input fifty pieces of content, however, that content is then served to all visitors, increasing the odds that any particular visitor will be served a more personalized, relevant piece of content.

This remains true for any area of the site the marketer wishes to personalize, from a banner on the home page to buttons or content on landing pages, registration forms, or any other site pages. For this reason, content development is still essential for on-site personalization to reach its full potential.

Despite this drawback, automation offers considerable value to marketers. By utilizing automation, marketers use a fraction of the time and resources they would have to invest by personalizing on-site aspects manually. Automation is the closest marketers have come to creating a true one-to-one online experience, delivering the most relevant experience for the user, increasing the odds of a conversion event and improving ROI.

A combined effort

Although marketers can get closer to one-to-one personalization in a variety of ways, the technologies used to reach that point are not mutually exclusive. They can be used together to boost the effects of one another. A/B and multivariate testing, segmentation and automation can be leveraged side-by-side on a page to maximize each visitor’s potential to convert.

With each step, marketers get closer to the one-to-one ideal. By striving for one-to-one, the user’s experience becomes more relevant, making them more likely to convert and returns more likely to improve.