In this article, we’ll help you understand the following…
- What a customer journey is and how to map it out.
- Why web personalization is important to the customer journey.
- How to improve the customer journey with web personalization.
Master the art of web personalization and watch your business grow to new heights.
What is a customer journey?
A customer journey refers to the process of a stranger becoming a happy customer. It’s not always love at first sight when a potential customer discovers your product or service.
Maybe they see your advert at the wrong time, or maybe they just need to find out more about your business before they trust you enough to buy from you.
Here are some of the most common steps people take before becoming your customer:
- See your Facebook ad
- Visit your landing page
- Look around your website
- Browse your catalog
- Read online reviews
- Call or email with questions
- Trial your services
Remember that the customer journey doesn’t end with them becoming your customer.
How you treat them afterward also plays a big part in how they perceive your business.
Why is web personalization important to the customer journey?
Burger King’s popular slogan ‘Have It Your Way” is a great example of personalization. Everything is prepared to order, and that concept is easily transferable to the web.
Web personalization uses data collected from your website visitors to customize their experience. It makes the content they see more relevant to their preferences and interests, which provides for a much better visit than a one-size-fits-all model.
Here are some more benefits of web personalization:
- Calls-to-action and landing pages convert better.
- Customers become more loyal.
- Improved customer insights.
- Increased time spent on your website.
- Recommendations become more relevant.
- Smaller sales and marketing spend.
How to improve the customer journey with web personalization.
We’ve covered the importance of the customer journey and the benefits of web personalization. Now it’s time to look at some actionable tips for how you can combine the two concepts and create a well-oiled machine
1. Extract Data from Visitors
You can’t personalize the customer journey without knowing anything about the customer. So the first step should be to collect their visitor data with the help of a digital fingerprint.
That can be done with the help of a tool like twik. Every time someone visits your website, you’ll know their demographics, geolocation, interests, income, the language they speak and more. As they browse through your website, you’ll know exactly how long they stayed and what content they looked at.
Next step: Read this guide on how to install a twik code on your website to collect data.
2. Trigger Events Based on Past Behavior
Once you have enough data, you can customize how you interact with your customers. That will help build trust and increase your chances of making a sale.
For example, you can serve a popup with a special discount if they’ve shown an interest in your products but about to abandon their cart.
Next step: Check out these examples of abandoned cart popups you can serve.
3. Recommend Relevant Products
If you’ve ever shopped on Amazon, you’ll have received suggestions for other products based on your order history. These product suggestions are often very relevant to you, which means you’re more likely to buy them.
That’s the power of web personalization. When you know what your customers are also likely to be interested in, then you can upsell them on other products or services.
Next step: Here is an example of how to recommend products your customers will love.
4. Create Dynamic Content
Dynamic content, also known as smart content, is based on your customers’ preferences. It uses the data you’ve collected to determine what kind of content they see when they interact with your brand.
Web personalization lets you show the information that is relevant to each individual customer and leave out the content they aren’t interested in.
The best part? You can easily update your dynamic content by changing the copy and location in twik’s dashboard, which results in the performance improvement of your site.
Next step: Here is an example of how to create dynamic content for your marketing channels.
5. Automate Your Marketing
What if the whole process could run on auto-pilot? We’ve covered how to extract data and use it to personalize content. The last piece to the puzzle is marketing automation.
It takes a lot of work upfront to create the ideal customer journey for every customer. But thanks to the tools available today, you can create a system that works in the background while continuously improving its own performance.
It’ll save you time, money, and effort. But it’s not just good for you.
Your customers will also enjoy the benefits of marketing automation because it means you’re available 24/7 and can still provide a personalized experience — even when you’re not there.
Next step: Check out your options for market automation and website personalization.
Let’s personalize your marketing
You know have an overview of how to improve the customer journey through web personalization and some handy tools to get you started. Although it does take a bit of work to start with, you’ll be rewarded many times over for your efforts.
Let’s recap some of the key takeaways from this guide:
- Each customer journey is unique.
- Web personalization is key to improving it.
- Start by collecting as much data as you can.
- Use it to recommend relevant products.
- Create dynamic content and event triggers.
- Automate the process and sit back.
Hungry for more? Head over to our guide on how to increase user engagement or view our solutions for web personalization.
