Why Website Personalisation is Harder Than It Looks?

This is not about personalising the content; it is about shaping all web pages and other elements of the website in the light of statistics and predictions.

Personalisation is actually not a new term. This concept has been in our lives long before we entered the internet world. But in recent years, website personalisation has been frequently mentioned. Looking at the market, it would not be wrong to say that the probability of success of sites that attach importance to personalisation has increased.

Although personalisation seems simple, it is possible to encounter many difficulties during implementation in both global and local markets. There are three factors in particular that make this job more difficult than it seems: resources/time, reporting and management expectations.

Resources and Time

It takes a lot of time and resources to fully customise a website. Moreover, this is not a one-time process, but rather a process. You need to make updates by following the trends of visitors and the market. The same applies even if you want to develop only a part of your website in this direction to make it simpler.

If you look at successful global companies like Amazon, you will see that their biggest advantage is that they have the resources and time to make and sustain the desired changes. Resources can be labour, money or data. Employees who can deal with different branches of the subject can evaluate the success and efficiency of the process from the detailed data to be provided.

In addition to carrying out the personalisation, the time factor can also include tracking how successful it has been with the relevant tools. Time is also required to obtain measurable data and to evaluate them afterwards.

Reporting

The next stage after resources and time is reporting. Reporting helps you to determine whether the personalisation has improved your web content. Reporting can be done in many different ways. Again, you can better understand which method is more suitable for your website "over time".

When reporting, you need to ask yourself some questions. For example; "What is the priority for you on your website?" Is it to increase the number of clicks? Or is it to increase the click-through rate? Is it to redirect to other pages of your website and provide visits? Ideally, your answer to all of these questions should be "Yes.". If you take into account that other questions will be added to these questions in the process, you can understand why personalisation is more difficult than it seems.

A/B testing, which probably cannot be applied much in Turkey due to lack of time and resources, provides you with the data you need for reporting. This test divides your visitors into A and B groups and aims to reach the same goal by offering different design and content examples. A/B testing helps you prepare a comparative report.

Management Expectations

Since personalisation is a time-consuming task in itself, it is better to get help from someone else rather than doing it yourself if possible. However, when even one person is involved, you should discuss the matter with him or her in detail and evaluate which expectations are achievable and which are not.

Sometimes it seems that discussions can be quickly closed with "Let's just test it" or "Let's run a campaign", but in fact website customisation requires a bigger strategic plan. Firstly, you need to identify your target audience and determine the details of the target audience with a team of experts in the field. Then, by re-evaluating this audience, faster progress can be made in new campaigns. You should also keep in mind that personalisation is not intended to increase website traffic, but to ensure that quality traffic stays on your site longer, and you should definitely inform your team about this.

In conclusion, personalisation is important for your website and adds excitement to the process, but you should know that it is not as easy as it seems. In order to carry out this process successfully, you should allocate enough time and resources to build your strategy well and place it on the right foundations.