As the internet puts the world at our fingertips (hence the name world wide web), customers can choose to be picky when browsing online. With this comes the idea of personalising the web experience for users through suggestions and creative content to sway them in the direction of your business. Here is how to utilise this phenomenon.
As soon as you begin to type a word into a search engine, a list will auto-populate with search suggestions. If you have not cleared your browsing history and cookies in a while, it will likely auto-populate with the exact terms that you have searched for in the past. If you have cleared your history, it will populate with popular search suggestions. For example, a suggestion for the term ‘bakery in Carlow town’ might appear when you type the word ‘bake’ into a search engine. This shows us an example of how the internet can be used for a custom experience to save users time when browsing online.
This can (and arguably should) be taken one step further with curated content. We explained this in detail in a previous blog entry (click here to read it), but in a nutshell, curated content is content that is designed to appeal to a specific target audience. So if you are targeting the term ‘indoor rock climbing donegal’, your website should have a webpage all about your indoor rock climbing centre with associated and relevant details such as what to do in your indoor rock climbing donegal based centre and the opening times of your indoor rock climbing donegal based centre. As this information and content directly related to the search term of ‘indoor rock climbing donegal’, you are effectively crafting content to appeal to those who search for it.
Brands have been very conscious of this personalisation aspect for a while now and have offered it as a way to increase engagement. For example, Coca-Cola featured bottles of their product with people’s names printed on them as a somewhat novelty way for people to want to buy them. In this instance, engagement with their brand was achieved completely via a personalisation aspect – the actual product itself remained exactly the same. This again shows us that people respond to something (whether it be content or a product for example) which they feel is personal to them as it fulfils their needs or appeals to them on a personal level.
Personalising the web experience for users occurs today because the potential customer is in a powerful position with plenty of choices online. To effectively harness your website and attract your target audience, contact the expert team at Ireland Website Design. As a premier Irish digital agency, our work drives sales to your business.
