Did you ever have the time to really think about personalization on your website? We all have much too less time. But personalization is so extremely important, you should really do so!

With this article we help you to find 7 recommendation positions for personalized content you didn’t even recognize before.

Position 1: Your Home Page

Sounds naturally? Yes it does! But look around and you will find so many websites and online shops out there which don’t even offer articles or products on their home. They build nice teaser images, link to categories. But lot’s of them tend to forget about their most important page: on most websites the home page is the most visited page of all!

Don’t only position one personalized widget on your home. Feel free to combine e.g. your bestsellers with personalized recommendations. And update the recommendations according to seasons, the weather or your target groups.

Position 2: FAQ Articles

FAQ articles are often visited very frequently. Think of questions like “Which payment methods do you offer?” or “How to create an account?”. Many people will visit these pages also from Google searches (SEO). And if you are using rich snippets, even more traffic will land on these pages.

That’s why you must use them to guide your visitors back to the content you are making money with. Offer personalized recommendations under the FAQ and guide them back to your site.

If you want to personalize your help experience, you can even offer other matching FAQ articles for the currently visited one to optimize the first impression of the visitor. Therefore use FAQ articles as personalized content recommendations.

Position 3: The Magic Left Column

Yes, lot’s of websites still have a left column. In times of responsive design the left column tended to die out, but still many online shops us it to offer their product list filters in a structured ways (at least on desktop devices).

In these filter lists people very often scroll until the bottom of the filters to find their preferred one. How great would it be to offer his personal content directly under the filter and he can stop searching and just visit the products directly? That’s possible with this recommendation position. Offer matching recommendations to his current selection and your filter experience will reach a new level. Update the recommendations when the user updates his filters and offer the right personalized products at the right time.

Position 4: 404 Pages

404 pages are really important. That’s why we’ve already published an extra article for this kind of pages. Don’t ignore your 404 pages, because many visitors will land on it. Read more here.

Position 5: Landing Pages

No matter what kind of landing pages:

• Explanation sites
• AdWords SEA landing pages
• Your company pages
• Enhanced product descriptions

Every one of them deserves to be more personal! Mostly, these landing pages are quite static, built once and will never change again. Fresh them up by offering a more personalized experience by adding recommendations. Define slots where to display recommended items and your traffic on this landing pages will thank you with an improved conversions rate coming from there.

Position 6: Exit Intent Popups

Exit intent popups are used extensively nowadays. There are several different kinds of popup contents, but the most used ones are the following:

• A contact form
• A coupon code
• A time limited offer

You could enhance these popups and complement them with the following kinds of recommendations:

• Contact form: offer “Couldn’t find what you are looking for? Try these.” recommendations to avoid additional support cases
• Coupon code: offer “Your Personal Sale Articles” for coupon lovers
• Time limited offer: offer “Last Chance to Buy These Products” containing personalized products that are nearly out of stock e.g. for a selling-off

Position 7: Support Chat

A quite advanced position to offer a personalized experience is your support chat. But it is also one of the most personal areas of your website, because there humans are really talking to humans.

If you are offering a support chat, it is maybe triggered automatically when the user visits specific pages or after some visiting time on the current page. This is the perfect opportunity to not only open the support chat and say “How can I help you?” but also ask your visitor: “How can I help you? Here’s a great selection of articles matching your taste!”. The visitor will definitely see the recommendations, because normally the chat pops up from the bottom right corner of the screen.

Rethink Your Personalized Experience

These 7 new recommendation positions for personalized content shall give you an idea what’s possible. Of course there are many more positions. Try to really scrutinize every kind of page you have on your website. On most of them personalized recommendations make totally sense and will help you to improve the customer journey. And make your static content sell more!

With Recolize you have the flexibility to position your recommendations wherever you want to. The number of widgets is completely unlimited and you can add as many personalized widgets per page as you want. And the best: you add the widgets to your pages in the Recolize Tool and don’t have to change anything in your CMS, blog or shop system. No developers needed!