In the vastness of the internet with a virtually infinite number of things to see and sites to visits, how can you make your site attract visitors? At one time or another, this question has plagued every web developer/manager that’s worked in the field.
Traffic is king; it doesn’t matter how good your publishing content is or how the goods you’re selling are of the highest quality if no one is around to see it.
Now let’s say you’ve already gotten that part down. Your traffic is where it should be, your SEO ranking is great – visitors are coming in droves – how do you make them stay, and how do you pump those conversion rates (if you’re selling)? Because fads come and go, from toys to hairstyles, to clothing accessories, to yes, even websites. If your site is just something that went viral for one reason or another, you won’t last long before you become irrelevant once more.
Aside from the pure quality of things present on your pages (articles, goods, reviews, etc.), it would help make your visitors feel at home. People tend to gravitate to things they know, things they’ve gotten used to over time; essentially, they’re looking for the “Cheers” theme song. That’s why we’re all in an uproar every time a new version of our current OS is released. Don’t get us wrong, sometimes the skepticism turns out to be on the money, but more often than not, the new is better; we just have to get used to it.
By now, you’re probably wondering where we’re going with all this and how it pertains to a WordPress plugin of all things. To that, we say – the perfect thing to make your visitors feel welcomed is dynamic content, and one of the best plugins that lets you do so is If-So Dynamic Content.
Personalized pages
If you’re new to the field, you might be wondering what dynamic content is. Without getting too deep in the technical aspects of it all, here is a short definition.
#Dynamic content lets you create personalized experiences for your #visitors, i.e., each of them or designated groups will have a partially unique experience when browsing your pages. Click To TweetIf you think about it, it’s all in the name already – dynamic content; it changes and adapts to the frontend user.
The content in question can be based on numerous characteristics – search terms, geolocation, history, previous visits, etc.
Now that you’re a certified expert on dynamic content let’s look into how the plugin that enables you to use it works…
No experience required
As advertised, there really is no requirement for any coding experience whatsoever. If you’ve mastered the art of publishing posts/pages, you’ll know how to handle this as well.
The interface of adding triggers is constructed as a series of blocks with cascading priority.
These are dynamic content versions that will be displayed if the set condition is met. The higher the version, or block, a designation, the higher the priority. In practice, this means that the plugin will go through these blocks and display them accordingly – if there’s any overlapping, the higher one wins, and if the condition doesn’t apply, it keeps checking further down the line.
Finally, at the bottom, the default display would be presented if no dynamic content was activated at all. After you’ve made all your choices and published the dynamic content, you’ll be resented with a shortcode you can then insert anywhere else on your pages and posts. By doing this, your content goes live and abides by the rules you’ve set.
Terms and conditions
The conditions we’ve namedropped a few times are crucial in setting up when and to whom specific dynamic content will be visible. Since it’s such a big deal, it’s good to know that the plugin comes prepared with a wide range of premade conditions just waiting to be met. So, let’s meet them, why don’t we…
Device
The first one in line is self-explanatory, choosing on which device the content to be shown. Mobile and tablet displays have much in common, but both differ wildly from desktop displays both in size and navigation. If you want to display large content or one that requires advanced navigation functions, you’d better limit it to only desktops.
User behavior
Looking at a condition such as “user behavior” might stump you for a second as to what it really means.
In reality, it’s the type of visitor – a new one, one that’s been to your pages before, or someone who’s already logged in.
Different things can be displayed for each group. For example, a new visitor could be prompted with a bonus/discount if they register, while a logged-in visitor will get a fully personalized experience based on the info they gave while registering. Additionally, you can also condition the language settings in the visitor’s browser.
Referral source
Based on how your visitor got to your pages, you’ll display content accordingly. It could have come internally through a referral from one of your pages or externally through a link on someone else’s. This will allow you to show content that connects the original page and the one they’ve gotten to.
Page URL
Page URL represents a filter of sorts. You’ll get to type in the URL directly or set a term which it does or doesn’t contain. The pages that have the required attributes will show the content while others won’t. You can use it for advertising products similar to the one on the page, for example.
Advertising platforms
Quite simply, if you use Google Ads or Facebook Ads, you can create dynamic content around them to make them even more useful.
Dynamic link
Create a dynamic link that shows for those visitors who landed on the page through another dynamic link, creating a chain of sorts where you’re gently guiding your visitor precisely where you want them to go.
A/B testing
If you’re looking to conduct tests for, let’s say, market research purposes, you can create pages that will feature content used in your key metric analysis.
You can then pinpoint the right content to use in order to maximize your site’s potential.
Date & time
You can create time frames in which content will be displayed all the time or a schedule that lets you finesse a bit more. Usually, you’d use this in your off-hours or push calls to action during limited promotions.
Geolocation
Display content based on the visitor’s country, city, continent, state, or time zone. Primarily used on global sites that attract visitors from all over the world, you’ll create content centered around things like national holidays or the season (it’s summer in Australia in December).
Pages visited
This condition is aimed at recurring visitors. Based on the pages they’ve visited before, you’ll be suggesting potential options following the same pattern. We’ve all seen these with any webshop or popular sites like YouTube. Essentially, you’re recognizing your visitors’ preferences and molding the environment around them to keep them engaged with content/products they’ll find interesting. Note that cookies will have to be enabled to use this condition.
Cookies
Speaking of cookies, you can input them directly. Like creating a trigger for previously visited pages, you can also use cookies as a designation if you want to be even more specific.
User IP
The fully individual approach requires you to input the IP directly. This can be used if you’re ever looking to single out visitors truly and as such is used rather sparingly.
UTM
UTM is the code you add to the back-end of links that will then show dynamic content based on the parameters you’ve set. For example, if a visitor got to your site via a link with a UTM designation for men’s sportswear (from a site dedicated to sport news), your pages will emphasize it. On the other hand, a UTM designation for women’s shoes (redirected from a lifestyle site) will focus on that type of content.
Audiences
Audiences represent custom groups of visitors you can create separately and then use as a condition.
Audiences are just groups where you can bunch up visitors based on a specific key. The key could be gender, age, referral site, etc. Once you’ve created these audiences, you can create a trigger that goes off only for that group or for everybody else except that group.
User role
Used both as a front-end and back-end tool, you can set up so that content is displayed based on your predetermined user roles. If you’re using a wide role tree with various access levels, you can implement dynamic content into your strategy. Not everybody can have access to everything, after all.
Analyze this
Nowadays, no plugin is complete without a data analyzer, either as part of the plugin or as an integration of some third-party software. If-So Dynamic Content features both – a trigger analyzer and through the Google Analytics sync.
Built-in analytics will show you the views, conversions, and conversion rates for every individual dynamic content version within a trigger, including the default block that comes last in line.
All data is shown automatically once the trigger is published, so you don’t have to worry about setting anything up.
On the other hand, setting up Google Analytics will require a little bit of coding to connect your triggers to Google Analytics. The process isn’t too difficult, and if you’ve connected elements of your site to it, there shouldn’t be any problems. Either way, you decide to go, you’ll be given more than enough data to know exactly what works and what doesn’t.
Conclusion
As we can see with juggernauts like YouTube or Amazon, personalization is the future. More and more sites lean into individual experiences for their visitors to give them that unique, special feeling. In the center of all this is some type of dynamic content, which should be a clear indicator regarding the direction smaller sites should strive for. Hop on the dynamic content train and watch your traffic and conversion rates soar.