Codelantic
Website Personalisation: Definition, Usage, And Challenges Faced
November 03, 2021

Technological advances and innovations have allowed businesses to customise the customer experience so that they target not only the intended audience but also each individual customer. Personalisation is a top trend in marketing and sales and website personalisation is another area being explored.

Custom application development companies can offer a range of services to businesses interested in website personalisation, which has several uses and benefits.

What is website personalisation?

Website personalisation can be described as the creation of a personalised experience for website visitors, where a business would offer a visitor a customised experience instead of going for the usual one-size-fits-all approach.

Website personalisation takes into account data on demographics, previous interactions, and purchase history. This information can point to what the visitor likes and dislikes about the website as well as what they find relevant and a software developer can make the necessary customisations to target the preferences and needs of the customer.

This sounds like a time-consuming task as there are so many factors to consider when customising a website for each individual visitor, but today, data collection and analytics tools have advanced to a point where customisation and personalisation is no longer a time-consuming task that businesses cannot afford to invest in.

Usage

While browsing an ecommerce platform, you may have had certain items recommended to you based on your previous purchases as well as items you viewed or added to your cart. These recommendations make it seem like the ecommerce business values you so much as a customer that they are willing to pay special attention to you. This, of course, increases customer satisfaction and loyalty.

These recommendations are an example of website personalisation. A travel site that shows flights from the visitor’s location or promotions based on the season also uses data to offer website visitors a customised experience.

There are several areas of a website that can be personalised in this manner and a software development company would suggest featured blog posts, customer reviews, and highlighted or recommended products as some of the key areas where website personalisation can be used.

Benefits

Businesses across industries can benefit from website personalisation, which can make marketing strategies more effective and boost sales.

One of the key benefits of web personalisation is better landing page conversions as well as call-to-action (CTA) conversions. According to Hubspot, personalised CTAs convert 202% better than default versions.

In addition to this, personalisation enables businesses to offer better and more relevant recommendations to website visitors and customers, which can increase sales and improve customer experience.

This, in turn, can also result in better customer loyalty. No customer would want to feel like they are just another customer and knowing a business cares enough to offer a customised experience to them can have a significant impact on customer loyalty. This is another benefit of web personalisation.

Challenges

Website personalisation has many benefits, but it comes with its own challenges as well. This is why some businesses still struggle to create a personalised experience for their website visitors. One of the key challenges is the delay in adapting to digital platforms, especially industries that started operations way before the introduction of digital tools and technologies. While a business may offer a personalised in-store experience, they may fail to carry this over to their digital platforms.

Another challenge is with regard to data, as there is an overabundance of non actionable data. This means that despite having a large quantity of data, the business may not be able to use this data to create a personalised experience for the website visitor.

Not having access to the right data may also prevent a business from identifying their target audience and targeting the right website visitors with the right message.

A key challenge businesses face with website personalisation is measuring the impact of it. This is important as the business may want to adjust strategies and address any aspects to web personalisation that fail to achieve the desired results.

However, a business can easily overcome these challenges by improving data analytics and data processing in order to access more actionable data and using the right tools to measure and monitor web personalisation and other similar strategies.