Visitors are not anonymous. Yet, most websites present the same experience to everyone. When you treat everyone the same you leave conversions, and money, on the table.
Referrers (aka referring sites or referring domains) can often give you hints about who your visitors are and what might help them more. Your web analytics tool or server logs gather referrer information. Here’s 6 ideas of how you can use this information to personalize the site experience.
- New Visitors – When I was at X Change, Cisco noted that they include a site section on their homepage to customize content based on referrers. Their “New to Cisco?” personalized box for new visitors converts at more than double the average rate! Recognize newbies with orientation messaging.
- Competitive Comparison – Let’s pretend you’re Dell. Someone comes to your product page after visiting a review on CNet or Wired. This is a great opportunity to piggyback off the tone and content of that article to address criticisms or play up noted features.
- Coupon Sites – Sites like www.RetailMeNot.com cater to a budget (recession?) conscious crowd. You probably have sale sections, newsletters with coupons or other bargain shopper friendly options. Try to capture these shoppers with targeted promotions.
- YouTube - Video lovers may be more responsive to demos, tips, tutorials or user generated content. If you’ve got it, try targeting these videos with relevant media.
- Help Forums – Current customers might be looking for support and prospects could be scoping out reviews. You might be able to steer them to your officially sanctioned support
- Press Releases – Press releases are likely to pull in reporters and bloggers. As you see people visit from known press release distributors and major media outlets, offer them additional news content or point to your press room to keep up the momentum.
Have you used referring information to personalize? What software do you use? Which segments are best? Share your questions and tips in the comments section.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
So true…it’s amazing the impact you can make when you customize your content to the people visiting your web site. Too many sites treat everyone the same. We’re so busy trying to be all things to all people that we miss the opportunity to leverage the difference between visitors that can impact the user experience in a positive way.
You’ve really touched on something that I’ve been working on for awhile. If you have a chance, I’d be interested in your opinion on a web app that we’ve been designing which helps companies match content to individual web visitors (www.marketingformavens.com). Right now, this isn’t based on referrer but on number of visits or page view history. We do track referrer and are looking for ways to integrate this in future revisions.
Hey Chris,
Seems like a useful tool for on-site behavioral targeting.
I’d recommend you:
– Give the tool a better brand name
– Get a slick demo
– Educate people on on-site targeting. It’s not something everyone is familiar with.
Come back and share your best successes and worst failures :-)
-Alex