Headshot of a smiling women with long flowing dark hairAnu Singh, Fiserv
July 1, 2022

Ever wondered what is the hidden cost associated with searching website content?
Frustrated users. High bounce-off rate. Cumbersome content navigation and the forever wait time for the useful content. Yes, all of these, and all these experiences can come together as a package for various website users leaving them as irate customers.

User experience with the personalized content makes a compelling case for generating content recommendations dynamically based on a user’s historic behavior and preferences. These experiences also reinforce the need for creating and curating relevant content as the content personalization does not build a longer relationship with users if your content is not relevant to them or requires efforts for searching the content your users need when they need it. For example, in a real-time situation, try imagining the frustration of an IT administrator receiving instructions or navigating through information created for using a teller machine to conduct a transaction when they need instructions for configuring a software.

To address this and many similar situations, we need to create content that changes, predicts and adapts over time based on an individual’s preference or behavior so that they see the right set of information when they need it. Not quite different from this experience is the situation we put our users in is by sending them a generic email, which, at times, might be irrelevant for certain roles and only spams the mailbox. If the email lands up in the primary email box, there is also no individualized touch and the overall -experience looks more like a push-experience without any empathy. For creating an enhanced personal user experience through content, we need Dynamic Content!

So, what is Dynamic Content and how does it simplify the process for users?

Dynamic content is any digital or online content that changes based on data, user behavior and preferences. Responding to a set of rules based on an individual or a user’s preference and behavior, dynamic content becomes more of a personal experience for a user, making navigation easier while increasing the information relevancy. A significant benefit of using Dynamic content is that it delivers an engaging and satisfying online experience for the users while minimizing bounce off rates on a website.

With digital transformations, technology disruptions in Industry 4.0 and the recent pandemic experiences, most organizations are willing to use technology and information to deliver delightful customer experiences at each stage of buyer and user journey. With the focus turning to customer-centric services, we are moving away from personalization to individualization in the emerging Industry 5.0 with a need to build personalized Content and One-Stop shop for all the content needs of a user.

Additionally, when we consider the hidden cost and revenue for content development, we must recognize the hidden cost associated with searching content as well. The longer it takes to search content, the more frustrations would it bring to a user especially when the task at hand is urgent. This will potentially lead to support calls and the added cost to company as well! A high-quality search and information access brings significant product gains, cost savings and strongly accelerates maintenance and problem solution.

One of the many value-adds with Contextual and “in-the-moment” content results in reduced support calls, enhanced efficiency and conversions with omnichannel customer journey experience, and a personalized space for marketing banners leading to potential cross-selling of products and services. Additionally, when used for promotional messages and greetings, dynamic content enhances client experience with individualized email greetings and content as well. It also creates an opportunity to add supplementary data to the email body content, dynamically furnished with contextual data from user’s account such as history of the account activity, preferences shown when logged in, type and level of product subscription etc., This could be considered for strategic messaging with compelling business needs to drive new businesses or renew the existing ones.

Based on these observations and characteristics, Dynamic content are ideal for implementation in the following five key areas:

We can use dynamic content to outreach potential clients with promotional messaging with emails, text and display ads; enhance user engagement with product or content recommendations; one-page pop-ups or site search. Also, the conversions can be used with display banners, forms and chat-bots.

Now the key question is how do we do it? Applying Dynamic content requires use of tools and technology, and we need to build an advanced personalization technology stack as well. For using Dynamic content in emails or promotional messaging, we need three tools, and these are necessary:

  • Open time personalization tool like Countdown
  • Direct mail automation tool like Inkit
  • Geolocation tool like Radar

To build dynamic web pages or web-based applications or portals that could allow personalization, we need to do it either by altering the server’s functionality, via server-side or client-side scripting. An effortless way to enable a server to deliver dynamic content is to employ server-side scripting. For example, using CGI – one of the first technologies used to supply dynamic content. There are multiple tool options available to create dynamic and engaging experience online like Oracle Eloqua, Adobe Sparks or Giphy for creating visuals.

To add personalized individualization, other data types like user attributes capturing demographic and personal information; event data for understanding user behavior and metadata capturing description information about product and service offerings are needed and must be gathered for an enhanced individualized content experience like the Netflix dynamic content with all its individualized recommendations you see when you access your account.

So, when you are considering content strategy for your organization, consider the user experience and tie it to your brand experience with mobile-friendly dynamic content and winning data analysis strategies to get the most out of the content your created dynamically.

Reference:
• Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference – O’Reilly
• Content Strategy for the web – Kristina Halvorson · Sarah Cancilla
• Websites: www.dynamicyield.com, www.toolbox.com, www.salesforce.com