Whether you’re a regular at Amazon or you have started using Netflix more than usual (justifiable considering the circumstances), you have probably noticed a trend that makes these two global services so customer-centric: their personalization efforts.

The suggested up-sells and cross-sells you come across when browsing Amazon and the movie and show previews you get on Netflix are highly customized based on your own search preferences.

If you’re a fan of comedy shows, and horror movies started popping up as recommended, you’d probably be annoyed, wouldn’t you? You’re not alone. Up to 74% of customers are irritated when the website content isn’t tailored to their preferences.

In line with the same logic, over 90% of customers state that they will rather buy from brands that offer relevant recommendations.Numbers also indicate what personalization truly means in the eyes of the customer:

• Being treated like a person as opposed to a number.
• Personalized recommendations and promotions.
• Transparent, activity-based personalized content.

So, how do you embed all of that into your WordPress website and monetize it? Here, we’ll cover a few core strategies to help you increase your site’s personalization, give it the look and feel that your audience will love, and ultimately boost customer loyalty over time.

1. Publish and entice customer reviews and testimonials

We are surrounded by variety and knowing that we can always find another product or service in a matter of clicks makes it difficult for brands to appeal to us. Publishing previous happy customers’ reviews and testimonials directly on your site allows you to put social proof to great use and allow others to be your brand ambassadors.

The presence of customer reviews gives your brand a more human, relatable tone of voice, and provides an invaluable perspective to a potential buyer who has yet to be convinced that you’re deserving of their time and money.

• Solicit customer feedback on a regular basis and ask them for permission to publish their testimonials next to specific products they have purchased.
• Add star ratings so that visitors can immediately see how your brand is perceived even before they choose to read reviews.
• Have a dedicated page for testimonials in case they want to read more thoroughly about how your previous customers perceive you.
• Publish images of customers using your products to showcase their real-life implementation.
• Use video-based reviews and tutorials made by your customers, to humanize your brand even more.

2. Use data to provide relevant recommendations

The only way to create personalized WordPress experiences is to listen to your customers and, quite literally, follow in their footsteps. Thanks to a slew of digital analytics tools that are connected to your website, you can collect visitor data and craft actionable reports based on the information you discover.

Data is your only way to fully comprehend the needs and preferences of your visitors, and how they peruse your site speaks volumes of those needs.

• Location and time information can help you tailor everything from your greetings (saying “good morning George” instead of “good evening”), to customizing the offers you provide (a US-based visitor will appreciate something Christmas-related during the holiday season).
• Their demographic traits will allow you to leverage their preferences in presenting your site and its content to other, similar visitors.
• Recognizing repeat visitors allows you to provide personalized recommendations (prompts such as “you might also like this product” or “people who have purchased that might also like this”, or “a bundle containing your product is now on sale”).
• Visitors’ interactions with your site can tell you a lot about their preferences, which can then allow you to customize recommendations for many others.
• Personalized discounts go a long way to inspire trust, motivate them to stay longer on your site, and entice engagement.

3. Let your domain and brand tell your story

Personalizing your website sometimes means using your personal brand to tell your story and build your professional authority in your field of work. If you are a one-person show, so to speak, and you’re using your skills and education to provide a unique service or product, then your own name can be extremely helpful in making your website more relatable.

• Weave your name or nickname into your domain name to make it more humanized and personal.
• Use a personalized .me domain name that can also double as a CTA, such as “buy.me” or “visit.me”, which will help entice action and inspire trust due to the reliable and trusted extension.
• Make your domain name short and memorable, easy to type and pronounce, so that all kinds of visitors can find you easily.
• Let the logo work together with your domain name and your brand name – allow the design to embody personalization and give your personal brand a visual edge that will appeal to your audience, too.

4. Give your content a personal touch

As you already know, personalization today goes well beyond using your customer’s first name as they visit your site or receive your emails. Brands now go out of their way to deeply personalize their brand experience – just look at how Coca Cola does that with personalized products, allowing customers to add their names to the bottle.

Although you might not offer products that are personalized, your website’s content should at the very least be tailored to your visitor’s preferences and expectations.

• Use images and videos with humans to showcase how your brand works or how your products are used.
• Provide location-specific product details or service information that will be relevant to your visitor.
• Make sure you don’t promote products or services that aren’t available in the location of that visitor.
• Feature blog posts and other content that each visitor will find useful and helpful. This will become all the more possible if you utilize the data from previous customer purchases or their social media footprint.

5. Engage your AI-based chatbots

From email automation, social media posting, all the way to managing your security, WordPress automation has become one of the simplest ways for a brand to reduce the number of menial tasks while still leveraging personalization.

One perfect example is the use of chatbots on your WordPress site, the easiest way to reduce your customer service team’s workload while providing visitors with personalized service and assistance.

• Use chatbots to personalize the type of questions you ask your visitors to get more information and understand their experience. This is why an individual will feel heard and valued when visiting your site.
• Chatbots can easily leverage every visitor’s footprint on your site to recognize their interests and provide relevant suggestions and recommendations.
• You can tailor the language your chatbots will use so that each visitor feels heard and understood.
• Let your chatbots provide personalized advice to your visitors to create a bond between them and your brand.

6. Make the most of geo targeting

When you run a global business, you know that not every customer will be impressed by the same landing page or the same information you offer. This is where utilizing geotargeting can help tailor the content you present on your site depending on your visitor’s country or IP address.

• Offer translations into the target languages of your most frequent visitors.
• Make your discount offers relevant to the local holidays, such as Thanksgiving in the US.
• Let your CTAs speak to the local audience in a tone of voice and with a level of familiarity they’ll appreciate.
• Offer reviews created by customers from the visitor’s location.
• Make sure to be transparent as to any location-related limitations with your service or product shipping. If they find out that you don’t ship to their location only after they go through the entire process, they are bound to get upset.
• Provide notifications and prompts that are relevant to their location, such as your changing business hours due to the pandemic.

7. Connect your site to social outlets

First-time website visitors might feel inclined to get to know your brand a little better, and what better way to do that than to check out your social pages? Additionally, social media reviews tend to be different, less selective than those you choose to publish on your site. In reality, social profiles give your brand more “juice” and more material for your audience to understand your business.

That is precisely why you should make the journey easy for them every step of the way, and create simple social media buttons on your pages to take your visitors to your social media profiles.

• Make it easy for people to share your content on social media by adding “share” buttons for every content piece you publish.
• Automate sharing with seamless WordPress plugins for that very purpose. It makes it easier for them to share content in a single click.
• Embed social media follow icons as an enticing option to get people to follow you, giving them another way to keep an eye on your brand once they’re done searching your site, or shopping. It helps elevate post-purchase engagement and brand recall.
• Connecting social media pages with your site allows you to deeply personalize the brand in the eyes of your consumer, as it enables an omnichannel experience and grants them immediate access to the most engaging and personal portion of your digital presence – your social media.

Summary

Finally, your website is a reflection of your brand, and the more you use your brand identity and its unique character, you’ll be able to introduce other, more versatile forms of personalization on your site. With these technical and creative suggestions in your strategy, you can create a custom experience for every visitor that comes to your site. That alone will be enough to make them feel welcome, valued, and heard, and you’ll have a much greater chance to leave a memorable impression and inspire them to come back to your site.

With the following base of close to 50 million people, Huda Kattan has built her reputation into one of unparalleled credibility when it comes to beauty. If she approves of a beauty brand, picks out a certain red lipstick, or shows you how to perfectly use your eyeliner – chances are you’ll follow. This, in short, is our need for “social proof”, or our preference for what is tried and tested, and what is already trusted.In reality, what makes Huda Kattan’s approach to reviews and tutorials different from that of hundreds of other highly popular Instagram influencers? Most likely, not much. Yet she has earned the global respect of her audience and brands compete for her approval every day.As a blogger joining the digital community that is more than 600 million strong, you need to leverage social proof on your site in order to grow your own reputation and build trust. Otherwise, you risk being swallowed by the sea of competitive blogs that heavily invest in this concept. Here are a few practical, actionable ideas on how you can incorporate social proof into your blog strategy and win over the hearts and minds of your audience!

Let social media numbers tell your tale

One of the most effective methods to use social proof on your blog is to present the social media footprint of your blog posts. Different types of engagement, including likes, shares, and comments will be a potent indicator of how much interest your piece has generated already, which will then entice new readers to follow through and perhaps even stay longer on your site.

• Include social media buttons neatly presented next to or above your blog post. Make them clickable, so that your visitors can easily share your content, too.
• Provide numbers of different engagement types. The number of likes, comments, shares, tweets, and pins will be helpful for your new visitors to understand how influential your blog really is.

Show off your comments section

The engagement on your blog will often be the main reason people decide to stay on your site and keep reading – after all, if previous readers have finished reading and started commenting, your new reader will be more interested in what you have to say.

• Right below the title of your blog post (or on the side), showcase a comment button with the number of comments presented next to it.
• If you still don’t have comments, then postpone this step until you start getting more activity on your blog posts, otherwise you might deter new visitors from reading your blog.
• Make sure that new visitors can click on the comment button, so that they can immediately go to the comments section if they are interested in what other readers have to say before they devote any more time to the piece itself.

Real-time notifications for subscribers

Numbers are a powerful tool for bloggers to showcase their community recognition and relevance, but if you bring those numbers to life, you can inspire immediate action when a new visitor comes to your website. To do that, you can incorporate a social proof tool on your site that will automatically generate little notifications letting your new visitors know whenever someone subscribes to your newsletter.

This pop-up will contain a customized message such as “Jessica from California just subscribed to my newsletter!” or “Mathew from Chicago applied for my writing course”. Seeing this activity in real time can bring your follower base to life and make your blog all the more relatable to your new blog visitor.

• Customize pop-up messages for specific pages and opportunities so that they can inspire very specific action.
• Keep the message short and sweet so that your visitors don’t forget why they have come to your site in the first place, and to avoid causing too many interruptions while they read and browse.
• Include as many personal details as you can, such as the first names and locations of the people that take action on your site – this will be the key to inspire trust in your audience.

Reviews and testimonials front and center

As a lifestyle blogger, you might wonder what kind of reviews you can possibly leverage on your site. Have some of your blogs inspired, for example, new moms to go back to their fitness routine? Have you made someone’s day by posting fun facts on a particular topic that falls under your expertise? Have you inspired someone’s child to make Christmas cookies for the first time?

Sometimes the simplest forms of impact you can have on someone can mean everything to a new reader who doesn’t know what they can expect from your blog.

That is precisely why you should leverage your audience’s praise when you’re promoting your blog, or a new piece of content.

• Devote an entire page to publishing reviews and testimonials for your blog.
• Ask your newsletter subscribers to share their thoughts for this column and ask for their permission to publish their review – being heard will help them feel valued, and it will give your site more relevance over time.
• Include questions towards the end of your blogs such as “What do you think? Share your experiences below!” or “Have any of the listed tips helped you cope? Has your life improved in any way and what would you suggest to our fellow readers?” – This will inspire engagement, and you’ll have an influx of valuable ideas you can then publish on your reviews page when someone gives you positive feedback.

Create enticing landing pages

Whether you want to invite more subscribers, raise awareness for a cause, get more people to apply for your online workshop, or anything in between – you should embed clear social proof examples into your landing page content.

• Add logos of major websites that have shared or published your content. Their names will instantly inspire trust in your audience.
• Clear data and statistics will let them know just how popular you really are, so include the number of your subscribers or the number of social media followers you’ve earned to give more value to your reader.
• Use smart CTAs on your landing page by focusing their attention on a relevant detail, such as “Join 100,000+ subscribers for my newsletter!”
• Post a quote from one of your clients or readers and use their words to inspire action as well as trust, with their permission, of course.
• Introducing live counters on your page can help create a sense of urgency on your site by showing just how many people are signing up for your workshop or for your holiday special – if spots are limited, all the more reason to create that FOMO, or the fear of missing out.
• Mention experts you will collaborate with and create hashtags just for the occasion. If you’re running a foodie blog, seeing the name of their favorite chef will make all the difference!

Related Article: Top traits of high quality landing pages

Star ratings to skyrocket your content

Giving your readers more options is a great way to inspire more engagement on your blog, but also to understand how they perceive your brand. By introducing star ratings for your blog posts or your services on your site, you give people an opportunity to rate your content with more than just words.

Yes, it’s always best if you can inspire them to give you an eloquent review, but seeing that your blog has earned 5 stars can help boost your authority. Alternatively, you can use the thumbs up and thumbs down clickable elements. Both will help you understand what kind of content is most popular with your target audience and then adapt your blogging strategy accordingly.

Expert collaborations

In addition to showing off your own skills and knowledge, and the perception of your audience, you also need to build up your credibility through networking. By associating yourself with eminent, recognized professionals in your field of work, you will, by extension, be perceived as more trustworthy.

• Offer interviews and organize them with people in your field of work who already have strong reputations.
• Create blog content together with a number of recognized people in your community, as well as established bloggers.
• Guest post on other bloggers’ websites, and link back to that content whenever you get the chance.
• Enable and invite guest posts on your own blog in order to boost its credibility.
• Join social media forums and groups where you can share your expertise, talk about important topics in your industry, but also communicate with other professionals. Nurturing such relationships will lead to other collaborations and long-term perks for your reputation.

Showcase your credentials

If people see you as nothing more than another random blogger, you cannot hope to soar in their eyes into a trustworthy figure. Depending on your specialty and expertise, you should incorporate your official, approved credentials that put your blog in perspective. Your academic degree, the university you attended, the research papers you’ve published, and the courses you’ve completed – they are all different ways to showcase the value of your words.

Make sure that your biography clearly outlines all aspects of your education and awards that give you credibility. Mention professionals in your field whom you’ve worked with, and link to the papers that you’ve written and published.

Although social proof is far from the be-all and end-all of reputation-building, it can make all the difference in transforming your online presence. By putting these various strategies to use, you will slowly help your audience trust your blog, and turn your name into a synonym for expertise in your field. The combined power of the listed social proof tactics will help boost your blog’s visibility, authority, and grow your audience as well as your impact.