The Next Big Thing on the Web: Sites Tailored for You Dynamic website personalization is a powerful tool that can boost business.
By Luke Summerfield Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The social media revolution of the past few years completely changed the way we use and experience the web. Now we are currently on the brink of a new web transformation: dynamic website personalization.
Until now, unless you are a monster organization such as Amazon, the experience someone has with your website is the same no matter how many times they've visited and what their needs are. Although we've accepted this as the norm, it is obviously not an ideal situation.
Dynamic website personalization (DWP) is the ability to dynamically change the content, messaging and offers displayed to a select visitor based on a set criteria. The criteria can be designed in almost any way imaginable: website behavior, actions, stage of the buying process, content interests, etc.
Related: 7 Website Essentials to Land More Sales (Infographic)
Why is this so revolutionary? Marketers can now segment and target their website visitors and display messaging that is extremely relevant to that individual's needs, wants and desires. Communicating in this targeted way forms a deeper connection with the visitor, which in turn boosts sales.
Hubspot, an inbound marketing software suite, is one of the first platforms to introduce DWP for the small to medium business market. Users are able to create what Hubspot calls, "SMART Content" and "SMART Call-to-Actions," which dynamically change content based on a set of criteria and doesn't require advanced technical knowledge.
When asked about the impact of DWP on Hubspot's own website, Meghan Keaney Anderson, product marketing at Hubspot, said, "We looked at the data for more than 93,000 calls to action created using HubSpot, and hundreds of millions of views over a 12 month period.
"We found that calls-to-action dynamically targeted to the user had a 42 percent higher viewed to submission rate than calls to action that were the same for all visitors. That's marketing, and impact, any business would love."
Related: 3 Ways to Create More Engaging Website Landing Pages
As impressive as this sounds, personalizing an individual's marketing experience is nothing new. It was not too long ago when personalization revolutionized email marketing. In the early days of email marketing, marketers would create one email to send out to an entire list with mixed results.
Then marketers got smarter and started segmenting lists based on interests, personas, industries, etc., and tailored emails to that particular list. This resulted in huge increases in email performance. Mailchimp reviewed their entire user base and found that emails that are segmented receive a 14.4 percent increase in open rates and a 14.9 percent increase in click-through rate than the list average.
These impressive stats seen in segmented and targeted email marketing is empirical evidence of what possibilities are in store when using DWP to segment on your website.
With very few web platforms offering DWP, the marketing world is on the "tip of the iceberg" of the dynamic web personalization internet experience revolution. However, I predict that in the next few years we will see all majority web platforms integrating dynamic web personalization technology into their functionality.
What are your thoughts? How would DWP impact your marketing and business? Please comment below and let's discuss.
