Personalized experience design: Tailoring digital journeys to drive growth

Highlights

You’ll learn how to enhance engagement and growth via personalized experiences:

• Tailored content: It allows you to deliver tailored content that resonates with users
• Improved interaction: Personalized experiences lead to more engaged customers
• Higher retention: Personalized experiences increase customer loyalty
• User experience: It improves user experience through intuitive designs 

Focus on tailored digital journeys and personalize digital experiences to drive engagement and business growth.

Statistics show that while 80% of customers want personalized experiences, 63% of digital executives struggle with delivering them. Hence, brands must start to rethink their approach to close the gap. It starts with crafting digital journeys that resonate with users.

What is personalized experience design?

Personalized experience design is the process of creating digital experiences based on customer interaction data. First, brands must understand their users and create content that resonates with them. Here are the key elements.

• Customer segmentation involves dividing customers into various groups based on shared behavior, needs, and demographics.
• Dynamic content: Businesses adapt content to different customer segments, devices, and digital platforms. 
• Predictive analytics: This is about using customer data to determine what kind of content to serve them.

Benefits of personalized experiences

When brands tailor digital experiences, it leads to many benefits, such as;

• More engaged users: Users tend to develop an affinity for brands that offer experiences that align with their interests.
• Increased customer retention: More engaged customers tend to become repeat customers, increasing retention rates.
• Improved conversion rates: Users are more comfortable clicking or using the services of brands that personalize their experience, which increases conversions for the business.

Case study

Leesa

Leesa struggled to curate a brand story across all its products. Content creators could not publish directly and had to rely on developers. The process was slow and did not support dynamic content delivery.

Contentstack allowed them to address the issues. The headless CMS redesigned its content delivery, speeding up the publishing process. With its headless approach, content creators manage, publish, and edit content while developers focus on building front-end interfaces.

The changes also enabled them to personalize at scale. They can track a user's website interaction, log related topics, and send targeted offers and recommendations. They can also direct users to a personalized product page and show them user-generated content from people who used similar products.

Hear from Richard Bilton, the Director of Technology. “Thanks to Contentstack’s Modular Blocks, we’ve really upped our game when it comes to personalization.” 

Read more about Leesa’s success story.

Strategies for crafting personalized digital experiences

Here are basic strategies to focus on:

• Create customer segments: Segment the audience, create customer personas, and align content to their needs. To refine this approach, you can also implement predictive analytics.

• Dynamic content approaches: Create content that adapts to user behavior. Tools like headless CMS allow you to integrate AI systems for dynamic content delivery.

• User-centric design: Design for your users using an iterative approach and keeping things simple. Also, design experiences that reduce users' mental effort.

When implemented, these strategies can kickstart your personalized experience delivery. They need the right tech stack to start.

Tools for effective personalization

Businesses need the right tools to deliver personalized experiences. Here are some key tools to consider.

Customer data platforms (CDPs)

Statistics show that only 6% of businesses can consolidate data. CDPs unify customer data, making it usable for other platforms. It gives you a central view of all touchpoints, allowing you to tailor digital journeys. 

For instance, a business wants to run personalized ad campaigns. Their CDP will collect data from their email, socials, website, etc. Next, it compiles the data into a clear customer profile that can be used in the ad platform.

AI and automation tools

Gartner says that 84% of tech leaders believe AI enhances personalized experience design, but only 17% use it. AI uses predictive analytics to suggest content and offers based on how customers interact with a business. AI chatbots can also personalize customer support.

Headless CMS

A headless CMS like Contentstack allows you to deliver dynamic content to multiple platforms. It separates content from its presentation. So, marketers can optimize content while developers design suitable user interfaces.

Journey mapping tools

These tools allow you to visualize how customers interact with your brand at every stage. It lets you into their emotions, thoughts, actions, pains, etc. Mapping the customer journey gives you real data that allows you to tailor digital journeys and create content experiences that address customer needs.

Composable DXP

A composable DXP integrates best-of-breed solutions to optimize digital experiences. For instance, Contentstack integrates AI, headless CMS, a personalization tool, and automation, enabling you to design personalized experiences at scale. 

Implementing personalized experience design

When designing personalized experiences, businesses must focus on the content, digital channels, and interface with which customers interact.

Content modeling and strategy

A content model defines the structure of your content at the basic level. So, you have content types for different touch points. Create flexible content models that support dynamic content and omnichannel delivery. To create content, focus on relevant search keywords and search intent and create helpful content.

Personalized experience via digital channels

Digital channels allow you to reach your audience wherever they are, be it social media, mobile app, or your website’s blog.

• Website: Some tactics include showing different homepage content for new vs. returning visitors, showing offers by location, using custom currency based on location, etc.
• Mobile app: You can customize app content with tailored CTAs, local language options, etc.
• Email and social media: You can also retarget social media users, send personalized emails, deliver content directly to user’s feeds, etc. 

User experience (UX) design

Aside from content, businesses must also design interfaces with tailored visual elements, layouts, and adaptive user flows. These tweaks on the user interface enhance personalized experiences when users interact with your brand on any device. 

Challenges and solutions

What issues can you expect to face when designing personalized experiences? Here are a few common ones:

• Data quality: Digital marketers face a data quality problem, from inaccurate to incomplete and unstructured data. Also, the issue of data silos is a common problem today, leading to fragmented experiences. CDPs can help harmonize data.

• Tech integration: Many businesses still struggle with legacy systems, which are difficult to integrate with new technologies. To solve integration problems, businesses can look towards API-first composable DXPs.

• Over-reliance on automation: AI tools cannot contextualize human experiences. Relying on them could lead to errors and generic interactions. So, businesses must supervise their use of AI systems. 

Future trends in personalized experience design

Here are tech trends that will impact the delivery of personalized experiences.

• AR and VR integration: With AR/VR tech, businesses can create more immersive experiences, such as virtual store visits, virtual try-ons, etc. These will lead to context-aware experiences that benefit users.

• Voice and gesture-based interactions: These systems will lead to more natural interactions, adaptive learning, and better access for users with visual or physical challenges.

FAQ section

What does personalized experience mean?

It involves tailoring interactions and experiences to the preferences and behaviors of users.

How do I create a personalized experience?

To start, you need to understand user needs, collect and analyze relevant data for insights, and design content that aligns with user expectations.

What are the 5 elements of user experience design?

The five elements are user needs analysis, content strategy, interaction design, usability, and visual design.

Learn more

Personalized experience design improves customer experience (CX), leads to higher engagement, and boosts revenue. A McKinsey study states that it can reduce customer acquisition costs by up to 50%, boost revenues by up to 15%, and enhance marketing ROI by up to 30%. 

Customers expect tailored experiences, but businesses are unable to deliver them. Why is that? For the most part, they lack the tools to make it work. Contentstack offers a composable DXP and headless CMS that addresses that. It gives you the power of AI and Edge-based delivery to personalize content with precision. Talk to us today to see how it works.