Hey, it's Csaba, and welcome to our first module, which is about the basics of website personalization. In this first lesson, we're going to talk about the different types of website personalization.
Your site visitors are diverse, and each one of them has their own unique background, desires, interests, and motivations. So, showing the exact same content to all of them probably isn't an effective way to engage them, right?
Website personalization is about serving different content to different segments of visitors. Often these different messages are called experiences, since visitors who belong to different segments will have different onsite experiences.
There are two main types of website personalization: Embedded content and Overlays.
Embedded content is about changing the native, base content of the website, like changing a headline to appeal to the interests of some percentage of visitors or by embedding an extra offer for some other segment. It's the least intrusive way of web personalization, since visitors will just naturally browse the site and digest the personalized content as they go, without necessarily even noticing that they are seeing personalized content.
Overlays, on the other hand, lay over the background content and conceal some part of it. The most common types of overlays are popups and sticky bars. Hence they are usually more intrusive (since they appear automatically), but they are also easier to notice, and thus they have much better conversion rates than embedded forms.
We'll talk about finding the right message type for your personalized messages later, but, for now, let's conclude that both embedded content and overlays have their use in a well-managed personalized website. Getting the most out of your personalization efforts will require using both types of messages.
In the next lesson, we'll talk about what kind of data you need for website personalization. I'll see you there!
