In the early days of the internet, web designers had to organize pages to accommodate the anonymous user and help that user find anything and everything the site provided. Pages needed search and navigation, and the navigation had to be all-inclusive – covering all the areas of the website.
That’s largely still the case for brand new visitors, but you can give returning visitors a better experience if you collect the right data and adjust your site accordingly.
For example, what if you discovered that a large segment of your audience only used search and never used the site navigation? That would allow you to free up that real estate for something more valuable to those users, like “your recent searches,” “search tools,” or “tips for better searching.”
In a similar way, let’s assume there are audience segments at a liquor store site that only browse the beer section. The site could give those users far better navigation tools for beer – imports, domestic, craft beer, beer by style, new to the shelf, top sellers – and put wine, liquor, liqueurs, cider, etc. under “more.”
Visitors are broadcasting so many things about their interests, habits, and how they use your site. But unless you’re capturing that data, it’s just evaporating into the ether.
By collecting the right data on your site visitors, you can customize and personalize the user experience to make sure every type of visitor is getting the most out of your site. A Customer Data Platform is the right tool to do this.
In this brief article, I’d like to point out types of user data you can collect with a CDP, and give some examples of what you might do with it. I can’t cover everything in one article. My goal here is to prime the pump and get you thinking about what data is available and how you might use it to make your site more useful to your visitors. If you’re inspired and want to talk about ideas, contact me.
Also, please give me a hand and like, comment on and share this article.
Data you should be collecting
The Referrer. Some of the data you collect in your CDP will also be collected in your web analytics program. The key difference is that the analytics program anonymizes this data. You know that X percent came to your site from Google, but you don’t have that information for any given user. The goal of a CDP is to convert unknown users to known, and to add depth to your data on your visitors and customers.
How can referrer data help you? Let’s say your site is used by teachers and by students, and teachers are more likely to use some of your site features. If the referrer gives you a clue whether your visitor is a teacher or a student, you can adjust the page to emphasize the features that group would be more likely to use.
The URL. Many URLs show the content structure of a website. For example, a URL might be mysite.com/lagers/pilsners. When a visitor goes to that page, that information can be stored in the customer’s user profile so you have a record of what content areas the customer has visited.
URLs also can contain query parameters, like mysite.com/lagers/pilsners?searchterm=Pilsner+Urquell. If you know the user is interested in that particular pilsner, you can make sure to display an ad for that item, or for similar items.
Query parameters are an easy way to pass information from one page to another. For example, when you add links to your site, you can pass information to the next page through a query parameter and then add that information to the customer’s profile. If you have “recommended reading” links at the ends of your articles, you could append “&linktype=rr.” (There are other ways to achieve the same goal. That’s just one possibility.) This allows you to see how many and which users are following your recommended reading links.
Tags on the page. Many content management systems allow you to classify content by adding tags. For example, if you have a page about investing in retirement, you can include tags on the page that expose that information to the CDP: something like. If you set up a listener in the CDP, it will read that tag and add it to the customer’s profile.
You can use that information to target ads on your site. For example, make a group of all the people who have visited retirement pages, and show them ads for your (or your sponsor’s) retirement products.
Note that any particular user might have scores of content tags in their profile, so when a visitor has 21 different tags, how do you know which ad to show? Simple. Make a counter, and pick the one visited most often.
Content on the page. Each page on your site has important content that can help you understand what your visitors are interested in. Keywords and author names are a logical place to start. If a visitor reads a lot of articles by a particular author, feature that author when you can, such as in lists of related or recommended stories.
Better yet, create email campaigns to follow up on user interest. If a visitor reads a lot of your investing articles, send an invitation to join your investing e-newsletter, to register for your investing webinar, or to purchase your investing newsletter. This requires an integration between your CDP and your ESP, and (even better) with your customer database.
User activity. Back when I was more involved in direct mail, one of the rules of list selection was that if you’re selling reading material, you want lists of people who have paid for reading material. You can make a similar selection among your visitors by looking at how much time they spend on your article pages. People who spend more time are presumably reading the articles, which might make them better prospects for your subscription sales or paywall efforts. You could also use such data to create a user group to test a new idea.
My friend Rob Ristagno likes to divide web users into groups. The super-users he calls “whales,” and he has a lot of ideas about how to treat them differently. You can collect this information in your CDP and use the CDP to give your whales a different experience.
One use case that’s been more popular recently is the “exit intent” popup. If the user moves the cursor towards the back button, you can display a message to try to keep them on your site. Personally, I find most of these efforts annoying, but it’s easy enough to come up with helpful messages, such as “Can we help you find something? Click here for live chat.”
Identifying customers. The visitor data discussed so far isn’t enough to match a web visitor to a customer, but it does allow you to personalize the experience to some extent. To make the next connection, and to identify your customers when they’re on your site, you need a more deterministic data point. The simplest is a login. When a visitor logs in to your site, you can capture that and identify them as a customer. You can then look up their account information and display all sorts of useful things, like that they need to renew their subscription in two weeks.
In addition to logins, you can capture specific user information when a visitor signs up for an e-newsletter. Store that email in the visitor’s profile, then look up the account information.
However, many of your web visitors don’t login, and don’t fill out forms. How do you identify them?
One way is to add customer-specific query parameters to your outbound emails. When you send a marketing or content email that links to your site, add a query parameter to the link that allows you to lookup the user. Don’t send the user’s email address, but send something that allows you to lookup the email address, like the record id your ESP uses for that email address. (Note that this solution isn’t perfect. If one of your recipients forwards the email to a friend, that forwarded email will retain the forwarder’s record id. If you want to discuss ways to fix that, give me a shout.)
Web forms. The holy grail of identifying a customer is when they fill out a form, giving you name, address and phone information. But don’t limit yourself to that. You can also capture data from quizzes and polls. That information might not help you identify the customer, but it can be useful for other personalization.
Your most important form is probably the check-out form in your cart. You should be capturing what your visitors enter in those forms, but you should also capture cart behavior. CDPs can help you with abandoned cart efforts, and they can also help you identify friction in your check-out process.
Let’s talk
There’s obviously a lot that can be done to use visitor data to make your site more useful for your customers and more profitable for you. I’ve only scratched the surface with these suggestions. If you’re curious about CDPs, or have one and aren’t sure exactly what to do with it, contact me and let’s talk.
