Personalize with visitor groups

One way you can personalize a digital experience with Optimizely Recommendations in Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) is to create a visitor group with criteria for that group. For example, you can design a product banner specifically for first-time visitors, or for visitors from a geographic region or market. For information about visitor group criteria, see Visitor groups.

In CMS, you can personalize any type of content in the rich-text editor and in a content area; personalize part of a text, an image, or a block in the CMS rich-text editor, or personalize an image, a block or a page in a content area, if you have these in your web pages.

If you have multiple visitor groups, a visitor may match more than one visitor group. You then can use personalization groups to group content to avoid displaying the same content twice, and display fallback content to visitors who match no visitor groups.

The preview option in the top menu lets you preview the personalized content as the visitor groups will see it, before publishing.

Apply personalized content

In the rich-text editor

1. In CMS, open the page for editing, and select the content you want to personalize in the editor area.
2. Click Personalized Content in the editor toolbar.
3. Select one or more visitor groups from the list.

   

4. Preview the personalized content to verify the result. To do this, click  > .

In the content area

1. Open the page for editing, and select the content you want to personalize in the content area.
2. Select Personalize from the context menu.

   

3. Select one or more visitor groups from the list.

   

4. Preview the personalized content to verify the result. To do this, click  > .

Edit and remove personalize content settings

In the rich-text editor

Click edit for the personalized content, and update the personalization settings, or select Remove Personalization.

In the content area

Expand the desired Personalized Group section and click the desired visitor group link to edit the settings. To exclude content from personalization, drag it outside the group, or select Move Outside Group in the context menu.

Example: display content to multiple visitor groups without fallback

In the rich-text editor

The non-personalized text at the top of the rich-text editor in this example is always displayed. The personalized text appears only to visitors matching any of the visitor groups UK visitors and US visitors.

In the content area

In this example, Returning visitors see one block, and First time visitors see another. Visitors that do not match any group do not see anything in this content area.

Example: display content to multiple visitor groups with fallback

You want to display specific price information to visitors from the UK and US, and other price information to visitors from other countries. To avoid displaying price information twice for visitors from the UK and US, you need to use a personalization group for fallback content.

In the rich-text editor

Select the fallback price information text and personalize it without selecting a visitor group. Instead create a Pricing personalization group and apply this.

Personalize the price information texts for the UK and US visitor groups, and also include them in the "Pricing" personalization group. The personalization group appears to the right.

Now the personalization for this content is matched within the same personalization group.

In the content area

This example shows pricing information as individual blocks, and the Default pricing is the fallback content displayed to visitors from other countries than the UK and US. Select Personalization in the context menu for a block to create a personalization group, and drag the other blocks into the group.

Personalize each block within the group by applying the appropriate visitor group. Use the Everyone option to display the fallback content displayed to visitors not matching any visitor group.

Search engine indexation and visitor groups

Search engines crawl your website to index your content. So what if your content is personalized through visitor groups, what will the search engine crawler see? It all depends on how the visitor group is assessed at the point of crawl. If you have a visitor group Visitors from the UK , the crawler will index the content personalized for UK if the crawler has an IP that is identified as being in the United Kingdom. Otherwise that content is not indexed.

Another example is where a date/time visitor group criteria has been applied. If you have a Weekend only visitor group, then the content will be indexed if the crawler comes along at the weekend, otherwise not.

It is good practice to have Everyone content in a group, if it is important that something is shown (or crawled) in a area of the page.

Provide access to content using visitor groups

Administrators can also grant access to specific content using visitor groups. For example, the administrator can make a page or a block accessible only to visitors from the UK, by providing access for the UK visitors visitor group; see Access rights.

Personalize Optimizely Customized Commerce content with visitor groups

If you have Optimizely Customized Commerce installed, there are additional visitor group criteria available specific for e-commerce scenarios. See Customized Commerce-specific criteria.

Personalize with connector add-ons and visitor groups

You can also personalize content through marketing automation connectors, if you have Marketo installed on your website, for example. See examples in the following video tutorials.