Personalizing content for visitors is making sure to check your stats to see what your visitors are looking for on your website, and creating content (if it is relevant), so you will not miss a potential regular reader or customer.
For those who have personal websites, this really does not do much as you might only be keeping a journal. However, if you do have a website that has interesting information that people can use (like blog advice sites, design tips, financing tips, making money online, and more…), you can use your stats to your advantage.
Usually by looking at what keywords are being searched and most visited pages are great indicators of your readers’ demands.
When I thought about this subject, I thought about a quote I heard in the the animation movie, Robots. (note, the thumbnail is courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios.)
See a need, fill a need.
It is important to make sure you try to cover as much as you can when you see that people are looking for a specific topic. Make sure to add a way on your 404 page so if your site search comes up empty, so visitors can send an inquiry to you. You do not have to put a contact form on your search page if the search turns up empty, but you can leave a link to your contact form at least.
You can have related articles and all sorts of tools to maximize your own in-house search, especially with WordPress, but that means nothing if you do not make the effort to open the door and encourage visitors to contact you. Asking your visitors what they are looking for and providing an extra way to contact you is a huge bonus.
When you fill the need, you are making your content more personal for your visitors and telling them that you are very interested in hearing their need for specific information.
Have you filled the need of your visitors? What other tips do you have to personalize your content for Visitors?
Nile, I used to keep the Google Voice widget in my sidebar but I don't think people really understood that the call would be free for them. No one ever used it so I took it down. Now I'm using Contact Form 8 plugin and I get quite a few emails from people wanted to do guest post and link exchanges. Some of them where spammy but then I also got a few wordpress blogging questions that were simple enough for me to answer and they were happy that I was helpful. Have you ever tried that plugin?
My recent post Reach a Wider Audience With Podcasting
I have tried Contact 7, but not Contact 8. I do have a copy of Gravity Forms which is better, and here at Blondish.net, I currently use Dagon Design Formmailer, which is awesome, but not as nifty as the Gravity Forms, which is even better than Contact 7 (has to be for the price paid…lol.) Gravity forms even allows you to set up a form so you can submit to your site’s post too.
A LONG time ago, I wrote my own shout board/ tag board that people could leave a comment and if I was there, I would answer, but also anyone else there could jump in and chat too. It was nice. Only problem is that I try not to use iframes on my site. I was a huge iframe fanatic before 2004 when designing my own website, but since then, have learned it does not really help for SEO.
I have thought about opening a forum, but I can just imagine all the support tickets from my 2 PHP scripts, and 99% of them are the same question, which I finally had to write on the scripts the answer to try to save time wading through emails.
Aside from providing as much information as I can, I try to fill the need of my site visitors by having a live chat service. This way, if they have questions when they get into my site, they can just simply clicks on the live chat button and have a conversation with me.
My recent post The Ultimate Life Coach Website Strategy
I have only had a handful of people use my live chat on my small webhosting biz site. Funny though, I get more emails through Blondish.net about hosting than my other site. Will have to brainstorm that out.
I do like live chat, but because I am online so frequently, Facebook, Twitter, and my email work just as great.
Would it be necessary to have a live chat on my website?
Hi Nile,
Understanding what users are looking for in your site is really beneficial to personalize your site content. I often look at webmasters and analytics search data. When there are some search terms that brought the user to the site and it has not the content direct related to the searched term there results any of two:
1. It increases the bounce rate and ultimately reduce your ranking for the keyword and in future search engines will learn not to send the visitor to your site for the keyword. PROBLEM!
2. This is an opportunity to learn where you can extend the content of your site. An OPPORTUNITY to personalizing content for your visitors.
Thank you for pointing out another good use of 404 page. I need to customize it a bit to embrace your suggestions.
My recent post Twitter Strategies That Works- NO Instant Followers Please
I am just learning how to really analyze my statistics and then write in accordance with what my readers seem to like the most so thank you for this post. I have not fully wrapped my mind around how to analyze all the stats yet but I am definitely watching for patterns and have been trying to go with the ebb and flow of my readers and have noticed a positive response from doing so.
My recent post Unbearable Lightness
Giving a personalized touch to your content is always beneficial to make the visitor trustworthy. You did a nice job and this is a message for who just think in the air. Visitors are core requirement for any website or blog site. They all want more and more people love their site or blog. So, making the content more personal can help visitor by realizing that he is on the right site or blog and the content of a site or blog is that which he was searching.