Dynamic content creates better shopping experiences.  With more relevant offers, interactions, and recommendations, your site will increase both conversions and AOV. 

This guide breaks down what website dynamic content is, and how to use it to increase sales in eCommerce.

If you're already familiar with website personalization concepts, feel free to skip straight to the examples here. Otherwise, let's begin!

Dynamic content is a web-page or email component that changes. Typically, changes are based on user signals that include in-session behavior, user data, and user-characteristics.

Dynamic content software matches the behavioral segments created from customer interactions and data to products that are most likely to convert.

As a customer engages with your brand, the software intelligently triggers the display of relevant content. 

Some personalization software and tools, like Barilliance, does this for you automatically, and connects the data between your website and email. 

There are many benefits to adapting dynamic content on your site. Below is a short collection of the major advantages you will gain using dynamic content. 

Below are examples of the most common website dynamic content tactics. 

They make your offers more personal, and ultimately increase conversions for your eCommerce store. 

Product recommendations can be used in a wide variety of industries. News sites can show customers stories they are most likely to be interested in.

Likewise, travel sites can present packages and travel destinations they know vacationers are looking for.

One of my favorite uses of dynamic content is personalizing offers.

It allows us to pair the best offer to the right client. This sounds abstract until you consider some examples:

One common use case for dynamic targeting is geo-specific offers.

Many of our clients ship to various countries, and know that shipping is the primary reason for cart abandonment.

Using dynamic content, they are able to personalize offers based on where their prospect is shopping from. 

Below is a great example of using location to specify shipping orders. 

You should treat new and returning customers differently.

There are a number of studies (including our own) that demonstrate returning customers are significantly more profitable.

We found retained visitors:

You can (and should) create more than two segments.

Using methods such as RFM analysis, you can reward your most loyal customers, maximize AOV with your most profitable customers, and use price incentives on new or fleeting customers. 

Below is a great example of presenting  an offer to first time visitors. 

Popups are an essential part of successful eCommerce personalization strategies.

We found that the most successful eCommerce popups are dynamic, reacting to your website visitor's actions. 

Common examples include

Above, Park City Lodging recognizing that most buyers buy after multiple visits. They provide an easy and convenient way for visitors to continue where they left off with a dynamic popup that triggers when a visitor is about to leave.  

Content personalization based on geography can create effective offers. By knowing where a customer is located, brands can create better offers to visitors.

Below is a great example from Booking.com. They know that some of the highest converting segments are people looking for places in the same local they are searching from. Maybe they are travelers that want to extend their stay. Or maybe they live there and have family or friends coming. 

Either way, Booking.com makes sure to include the local location as part of their "Featured destinations".

Returning customers is one of the most profitable customer segments. When TheRealReal recognizes a returning customer, they trigger an advocacy based retention campaign.

The campaign works by removing friction with a pre-written invite they can send to their friends. They also create a monetary incentive for both the referrer (the returning customer), and the referee (someone the customer invites to try TheRealReal).

Target is fantastic at presenting relevant offers in real time. At time of writing, it is nearing Thanksgiving in the United States. It is one of the most important times in retail, and Target  makes sure to capitalize with a series of dynamic, personalized content. 

The core strategy Target uses is content personalization via widgets. We see them across multiple pages. 

This widget is injected halfway down the home page.

When a shopper engages with the widget, a few specific holiday related offers are presented. 

In this case, there is a "universal" injection that I noticed on many categories - the "Holiday Price Match Guarantee", as well as the "Creat delicious holiday memories" widget which I only saw dynamically placed when a visitor was looking at kitchen related categories.

As you go around, numerous other holiday specific offers were present. Below is but one example.

The exact process for creating dynamic content will depend on your personalization vendor. 

Barilliance provides a live, front end editor to create dynamic content widgets.

Designing is simple. You can add content blocks and see how color, font, and font style choices come together. 

With rule variations, you can opt to change any number of variables - including the form factor that you present to customers. Below is a list of current options. 

Netflix is a pioneer in dynamic content. They use a variety of personalization tactics to engage and retain customers. 

Below, we breakdown a few ways they use website dynamic content, and what lessons eCommerce stores can take away.

Content variety is key to Netflix's flywheel.

As they state in their 2018 annual filing, "We are continuously improving our members' experience by expanding our streaming content".

In fact, in 2018 Netflix released close to 1,500 hours of original content alone. 

Image Credit

Content helps both acquire and retain customers.

However, in reality, the sheer amount of content on Netflix would be overwhelming for users without personalization capabilities. 

Netflix solves this problem with product recommendations, powered by a rich data around each of their titles. 

Netflix uses an advanced product recommendation engine to help customers navigate the 7,000+ movies and shows available.

One secret behind their success is using precise categories to group titles into. Although in your account, you'll only see a handful of categories, behind the scenes Netflix is using hundreds. 

Here are just a few examples - from "Dark War Movies from the 1950s" to "Detective Action & Adventure".

Netflix invests resources to categorize each movie. In turn, each subscriber is presented with highly relevant offeres every time they log in.

In addition to creating specific movie categories, Netflix uses a variety of "top-level" categories.

For most e-Commerce stores, this would be "Top Selling" or "Woman's Fashion". In Netflix's case, top-level categories translate to "Bing-Worthy" and "Trending". 

Here, Netflix keeps the titles and instead personalizes what titles are showcased based on previous viewing history.

Check out the screenshots below of two different users. (Almost) same title - very different types of shows. 

Finally, Netflix personalizes how they present each show to users. 

They do this in two significant ways. First, is what category they present the title under. Second, they personalize the thumbnail image they use to maximize interest.

There are three big takeaways from Netflix's use of dynamic content. 

First, brands should ask what rich data they should add to their product catalogues. 

Data fuels recommendations. Going beyond basic product information can create an advantage your competitors cannot replicate. Take Amazon for example. 

They use a vast array of product reviews, customer purchase data, and product categorization to create dynamic titles and content. 

Boardgamegeek.com is another example. They use their own taxonomy of games to orient and direct user generated content. 

Second, brands should be actively testing offer variations. While Netflix does this through title images, eCommerce stores can test not only how they present their products, but also site-wide offers. For a curated list of successful AB test examples, click here.

Third, eCommerce stores should use product recommendations throughout their site to surface the most relevant products for each customer.

As you can see, dynamic content is a powerful personalization tool. 

The power of dynamic content comes from its ability to change according to the user. 

In contrast, static content does not change. When you use static content, the components of the webpage or email must be preset. This forces you to treat everyone the same, regardless of a prospects revealed preferences.

While some pages will benefit from static content (typically faster load times, etc.) home, category, and especially product pages benefit from personalization.

Below are some sample results from WildEarth's implementation of a variety of personalization tactics.

Once you decide that dynamic content and web personalization can benefit your site, you need to select a technology partner to make it happen. 

We've put together a great guide on how to select a personalization vendor. 

Additionally, if you would like to see how Barilliance helps hundreds of eCommerce stores personalize their interactions with customers, you can request a demo here.