Hey there!
I’m Benjamin from Loves Data.
In this video, I’m going to show you how you can automatically adjust the content that
someone sees on your website using Google Optimize.
We’re going to be using personalization!
Personalization lets you modify your website content, including text and images, based
on different audience traits.
For example, you might display a special notification or promotion based on someone’s geographic
location, or show a different headline or call-to-action if someone is a returning customer.
So let’s head to Google Optimize and get started with personalization!
Okay, I’ve already logged into my Google Optimize account, so I can see my account
and the Google Optimize container I’ve already added to my website.
If this is your first time using Google Optimize, you will need to create your account and container
before setting up personalization.
You can find a link to my getting started tutorial in the description below this video.
So feel free to hit pause, check out my other video, and then come back here when you’re
ready.
Basically, you will need to add the Google Optimize code to your website, make sure you’re
using Chrome as your browser and install the Google Optimize extension for Chrome.
Okay, to create a personalized experience on our website, let’s select our container…
And now let’s click ‘Create Experience’...
First, we need to name our experience.
I’m going to customize my homepage for this video, so I’m going to name it ‘Home Page
Australian Personalization’....
Now I’m going to enter my home page as the URL to use when editing my website in Google
Optimize…
And I’m going to select ‘Personalization’...
And then I’m going to click ‘Create’...
Now we can see the different elements we need to configure.
If you’re already run an experiment using Google Optimize, then it’s very similar.
We need to make the changes to our website that we want people to see…
We need to define who is going to see the personalized version of our website…
We can add a description…
Adjust how Google Analytics will report on our new personalized experience…
And there are some additional setting we can control…
I’m going to start by making the changes to my website.
So let’s click ‘Make Site Changes’...
This will load our website, along with the Google Optimize editor…
Today, I’m going to keep things simple.
I’m just going to adjust the main heading for people located in Australia.
So let’s select the element we want to change…
Now I’m using Squarespace for my website and Squarespace has a few quirks.
One of them is that element IDs can change, so I’m going to click the selector at the
top…
And I’m going to deselect the option that says ‘use element ID’...
Now I’m going to click ‘Edit Element’...
And I’m going to choose ‘Edit Text’...
And I’m going to change the headline so that it says ‘G’day, we’re here to help’...
Once I’m happy with my changes I’m going to click ‘Done’...
And I’m going to click ‘Save’...
Now it’s a good idea to check how your changes appear in different browsers, so I’m going
to select one of the mobile devices from the drop-down at the top of the window…
And I can see my new headline is being displayed, so that looks good.
Now I can click ‘Done’...
Okay, it’s time to set the targeting for my personalized experience.
This is how you control who sees the changes you’ve made.
I can already see that my personalized experience is targeted to the home page of my website,
but I only want people located in Australia to see my headline, so I’m going to click
‘Customize’ for my ‘Audience Targeting’...
We can now see all of the ways we can target our personalized content on our website.
We can target people who are clicking through from our Google Ads campaigns…
We can target people based on the campaign tags we’re using for our other marketing…
We can target based on the device someone is using and more…
For my example, I’m going to select ‘Geography’...
Now I can select ‘City’...
And change this to ‘Country’...
And then all I need to do is search for ‘Australia’...
Now I can click ‘Add’...
We can see that our personalized experience will be targeted to our home page and that
people located in Australia will see our new headline.
Scrolling down, I can then choose if I want to send an additional hit to Google Analytics
so that I can report on people viewing the experience in my Google Analytics reports.
I’m going to click the edit icon…
And I’m going to select the option to send the additional hit, so that I can make use
of the reports in Google Analytics…
Then I can click ‘Done’...
Now I can double-check everything, and when I’m ready I can click ‘Start’ to launch
the personalized experience on my website.
Now I can head to my website…
And I can see my personalized experience is now being displayed to people located in Australia.
That’s it!
So that’s how you can present different content to people visiting your website using
Google Optimize.
Remember, that once you’ve made the changes in Google Optimize, it’s important to preview
them on different browsers to make sure everything is working as you expect.
And if you make changes to your website, then it’s a good idea to recheck any running
experiments and personalization in Google Optimize.
This is because changes to your website’s content and code might potentially break the
experiences you’ve created in Google Optimize.
How are you going to personalize your website?
I’d love to know!
Let me know in the comments below.
And if you found this video helpful please subscribe, share it with your friends, and
hit the like button so I know to make more videos like this.
See you next time!