What is website personalisation?
Website personalisation means changing parts of a webpage, such as the headline, image, proof point or call to action, so that what a visitor sees fits who they are or why they came. The page itself stays the same. Only selected elements change.
The decision is based on information you already have: the campaign link someone clicked, the company or industry you are targeting, or details you hold about a contact. Visitors who don't match a rule see your original page, so nobody gets a broken or empty experience.
Website personalisation examples
Three worked examples with fictional companies show how one page can serve different visitors:
- Industry-specific messaging. A software company runs one product page. Visitors from a manufacturing campaign see a headline about reducing downtime and a factory image. Visitors from a financial services campaign see a headline about operational resilience and a relevant case study. Everyone else sees the original page.
- Account-based marketing. A sales team targets Northstar Logistics. When someone clicks the campaign link, the page shows Northstar's logo, a line welcoming the team by company name and a call to action to book a review with their account manager.
- Retail and ecommerce. An outdoor retailer emails loyalty members about a sale. Members who have bought running gear see running shoes and a members' offer. Members who bought hiking gear see walking boots instead. The page and the checkout are the same for both.
Your website has a difficult job.
It needs to explain what your business does, communicate why it matters and encourage visitors to take the next step. And it needs to do all of that for people who may have very different priorities.
An IT Director at a financial services company could be concerned about operational resilience and risk. A manufacturing executive might be more interested in improving efficiency and reducing disruption. A professional services leader may be looking for ways to improve productivity and collaboration.
They could all benefit from the same underlying technology solution.
But should they all see exactly the same message?
Most websites are designed around a fairly broad proposition. That's understandable. Building and maintaining a different page for every industry, account or campaign would quickly become difficult to manage.
Website personalisation offers another approach.
Instead of creating a separate page for every audience, you can adapt selected elements of an existing webpage to make the experience more relevant to the visitor.
The page stays the same. The message changes.
And getting started doesn't have to be complicated.
This guide walks through the process of planning and launching your first website personalisation campaign, including choosing the right audience, deciding what to change, building the experience in Marketing Guppy and checking everything before you go live.
We'll use a fictional technology provider to make the process practical.
1. Start with one page, not your entire website
The best place to begin is where relevance could make a meaningful difference.
When people first explore website personalisation, it's tempting to imagine an entire website that changes for every visitor.
That's possible to approach over time, but it's rarely the most useful starting point.
A better first step is to identify one webpage where a more relevant message could help visitors understand your proposition or take the next step.
That might be a product page, a solution page or a landing page already receiving traffic from several campaigns.
You want a page with a clear purpose and audiences whose needs are meaningfully different.
What makes a good starting page?
Look for three characteristics.
It attracts different audiences.
The page receives visitors from different industries, campaigns or account groups, all of whom may have a different reason for being interested.
It has a clear next step.
You know what you want visitors to do, whether that's exploring a solution, reading a relevant resource or making an enquiry.
The message could be more specific.
The existing page is broadly relevant, but it doesn't fully reflect the challenges or priorities of the audiences arriving there.
If you can identify a page that meets these conditions, you've found a sensible place to begin.
Our example: A B2B technology provider
Imagine a fictional business called Atlas Technology.
Atlas provides a technology platform that helps organisations connect information, improve operational visibility and coordinate work across their business.
Its existing product page has the headline:
Bring your business together with connected technology.
The supporting copy explains the platform's capabilities, and the main CTA invites visitors to explore the solution.
It's a reasonable starting point.
But Atlas sells to financial services organisations, manufacturers and professional services businesses.
Although the underlying platform is the same, each industry has different priorities.
Instead of creating three separate websites or rebuilding the product page, Atlas decides to personalise the existing page for those audiences.
The objective is simple: help each visitor recognise how the platform relates to the challenges they care about.
2. What do you know about your visitors?
Personalisation starts with context, not guesswork.
To show someone a more relevant experience, you need a way of deciding which version they should see.
That doesn't always require knowing exactly who the person is.
Sometimes the campaign or link that brought them to the page provides enough information.
In other situations, you may have account or contact details available through an existing marketing system.
The important thing is to use reliable information rather than making assumptions about an unknown visitor.
Campaign and traffic information
Imagine Atlas is running three industry campaigns.
One is aimed at financial services, another at manufacturing and a third at professional services.
The campaign links can carry information identifying the audience segment.
When a visitor follows the manufacturing campaign link, Marketing Guppy can use the matching segment rule to display the manufacturing version of the page.
You don't need to know the person's name or company to create that experience.
You already know which campaign they responded to.
Account information
If you're targeting known organisations, you may have information such as the account name, industry or other relevant details.
This can support more specific experiences, provided the information is supplied through an appropriate campaign or audience-identification method.
For example, Atlas could create a personalised experience for a strategic manufacturing account that acknowledges the organisation and highlights content relevant to its known priorities.
Contact information
When you're engaging an identified individual, you may have relevant information such as their name, job role or organisation.
That can support more focused experiences, particularly for sales outreach or account-based marketing.
However, individual personalisation isn't always necessary.
A relevant industry message may be more useful than a page that simply inserts someone's first name.
What about anonymous visitors?
Not everyone visiting your website will arrive through a personalised link or have information associated with their visit.
That's completely normal.
Marketing Guppy can display the original page when no relevant personalisation rule matches.
This is important because personalisation should enhance the experience when reliable context is available, without making the website dependent on identifying every visitor.
A useful principle: Personalise using what you know. Don't pretend to know what you don't.
3. Decide what should change
You don't need to personalise everything.
One of the easiest mistakes is assuming that a personalised page needs to look completely different for every audience.
It doesn't.
A few carefully chosen changes can make the experience more relevant while keeping the underlying design, structure and proposition consistent.
For your first campaign, focus on the elements that help someone understand why the page matters to them.
The headline
The headline is often the most important place to start.
It sets the context for everything that follows.
Atlas's original headline is:
Bring your business together with connected technology.
That describes the broad proposition, but it doesn't address the specific priorities of any of the three industries.
Consider these alternatives.
Financial Services
Build a more resilient, connected financial services operation.
Manufacturing
Keep production moving with better-connected operations.
Professional Services
Give your people more time for the work that matters.
Each headline approaches the same underlying solution from a different perspective.
The supporting message
The supporting copy should reinforce the headline and connect the technology to the audience's priorities.
For Financial Services, Atlas might focus on visibility, resilience and control.
For Manufacturing, the message could emphasise operational coordination and reducing disruption.
For Professional Services, it could highlight productivity, collaboration and more efficient workflows.
This doesn't mean inventing new capabilities.
The underlying solution must genuinely support the claims being made.
The objective is to emphasise the aspects most relevant to the audience.
The imagery
Images can help visitors recognise the context immediately.
A financial services audience might see imagery reflecting business operations and financial environments.
Manufacturing visitors could see relevant industrial operations or production settings.
Professional services visitors might see modern collaborative working environments.
Choose imagery that supports the message rather than simply providing visual variety.
The resources and next steps
Different audiences may find different resources useful.
A financial services visitor could be more interested in a guide to operational resilience.
A manufacturing visitor might prefer a production continuity briefing.
Someone from professional services could benefit from a resource about improving team productivity.
If those resources exist, you can make them more prominent for the relevant audience.
The CTA should follow naturally from the message.
Don't direct someone towards a resource that has little relationship to the reason they arrived.
A practical comparison
| Element | Original page | Manufacturing version |
|---|---|---|
| Headline | Bring your business together with connected technology | Keep production moving with better-connected operations |
| Supporting message | Connect your teams, information and processes | Improve visibility and coordination across manufacturing operations |
| Imagery | Generic business technology | Manufacturing operations |
| Resource | Platform overview | Production continuity briefing |
| CTA | Explore the platform | Explore manufacturing solutions |
The product hasn't changed.
The visitor simply encounters a proposition that is easier to connect to their own priorities.
4. See how the same page changes for different visitors
One underlying webpage. Three different industry experiences.
Let's look at how Atlas Technology could personalise its existing product page.
The following scenarios are fictional and are intended to demonstrate the approach.
Fictional example · Atlas Technology is not a real customer
Bring your business together with connected technology.
Connect your people, information and processes with a platform designed to help your organisation work more effectively.
Explore the platform →What's happening behind the scenes?
All three industry experiences use the same underlying Atlas product page.
The original design, structure and core technology proposition remain consistent.
Marketing Guppy selects the appropriate content variations when the supplied visitor context matches the campaign's personalisation rules.
Visitors who don't match a rule continue to see the original page.
This example illustrates why the most effective personalisation is often about relevance rather than the number of things that change.
5. Build your first campaign in Marketing Guppy
From an existing page to a personalised experience.
You've chosen your webpage, identified your audiences and prepared the content you want each visitor to see.
Now it's time to put it together.
You don't need to rebuild the original webpage or create a separate landing page for each audience.
Marketing Guppy is designed to work with the pages you already have.
Step 1 — Connect your website
Before personalising a webpage, Marketing Guppy needs to be connected to the site.
This involves adding the Marketing Guppy script using the supported installation method.
Once the script is installed and the connection is confirmed, you can begin configuring personalisation.
The script allows the published personalisation rules to apply relevant content to the selected elements of the webpage.
Step 2 — Create your campaign
Create a campaign in Marketing Guppy and add the existing webpage you want to personalise.
For Atlas, this is the main connected technology product page.
Give the campaign a name that clearly describes its purpose.
For example:
Atlas — Industry Website Personalisation
This makes it easier to identify and manage as you build additional campaigns.
Step 3 — Select the elements to personalise
Use Marketing Guppy's page tagging tools to select the webpage elements you want to adapt.
For our example, that includes:
- The main headline
- Supporting paragraph
- Hero image
- Featured resource
- Call-to-action text
You can start with fewer elements if that makes the first campaign easier to manage.
The most important thing is that every change has a clear reason.
Step 4 — Create your content variations
Prepare the content for Financial Services, Manufacturing and Professional Services.
Add the relevant headline, copy and other supported content changes for each experience.
Keep the wording consistent with what Atlas genuinely offers.
Remember that a personalised message should be more relevant, not more exaggerated.
Step 5 — Define the targeting rules
Create the audience conditions that determine when each version should appear.
For this example, the three industry campaigns use traffic segments.
Each segment is associated with the corresponding content variations.
When someone follows the appropriate campaign link, the supplied segment information allows Marketing Guppy to select the matching experience.
Step 6 — Preview each audience
Use the preview tools to check the different experiences before publishing.
Test each industry version and make sure the headline, imagery, supporting content, resource and CTA are consistent.
Then test an unmatched visitor to confirm the original page remains appropriate.
Also check what happens when information is missing.
Step 7 — Publish the campaign
Once the content and rules have been tested, publish the campaign.
Use the generated campaign links in the appropriate channels.
For Atlas, that means distributing the Financial Services link with the financial services campaign, the Manufacturing link with the manufacturing campaign and the Professional Services link with the professional services campaign.
The link needs to carry the context required for the correct version to appear.
Step 8 — Review and improve
Once visitors begin arriving, review the available campaign activity and relevant measurements.
Look for signs that the experience is supporting the objectives you defined.
You can then refine the content, adjust the next step or introduce further audiences as required.
Start with a manageable campaign, learn from it and expand when there's a clear reason to do so.
6. Getting the targeting right
The rules matter as much as the content.
Creating a relevant page variation is only half the job.
The other half is making sure it's displayed in the right circumstances.
A manufacturing headline shown to a professional services visitor could be more confusing than the original generic page.
That's why it's important to understand your targeting rules and test them carefully.
Keep your audience segments clear
For your first campaign, avoid creating unnecessarily complex targeting logic.
If you're running three industry campaigns, start by defining three clear segments.
Each should have a specific purpose and a corresponding set of content variations.
As your programmes become more sophisticated, you may need rules based on multiple conditions.
Marketing Guppy supports traffic-segment rules, including combinations of conditions. Use those capabilities where they're needed, but don't make your first campaign more complicated than necessary.
Understand rule matching
Your targeting rules determine which content variation should appear for the supplied context.
Test the behaviour when a visitor matches one condition, several conditions or none at all.
Don't assume the result will be correct simply because you've created the rules.
Use the available preview tools to check the intended outcome.
Plan for missing information
Not every visit contains the information needed to select a personalised experience.
And even when you have an account or contact record, some values may be missing.
A good campaign includes sensible fallback content.
For example, if a company logo can't be resolved, the design should still look intentional.
If an individual name isn't available, the headline should still make sense.
If no personalisation rule matches, the original page should continue to provide a useful experience.
The rule of thumb: The personalised version should be better when the right information is available. The original version should still work when it isn't.
Keep personal data out of unnecessary places
Only use information that is appropriate for the experience and that you're entitled to process.
Avoid putting sensitive information into campaign parameters or content.
Use Marketing Guppy's supported sharing tools rather than manually constructing links containing unnecessary personal data.
A more personal experience should never come at the expense of responsible data handling.
7. Test the complete visitor experience
Don't just check whether the headline changes.
It's easy to focus on the most visible aspect of personalisation.
But a good visitor experience depends on more than getting the headline right.
Before launching, check the entire page from the visitor's perspective.
Message consistency
Does the content match the campaign that brought the visitor to the page?
For the manufacturing campaign, the headline, supporting message, featured resource and CTA should all feel connected.
Visual consistency
Does the page still look like the same brand?
Different imagery and content lengths shouldn't cause awkward spacing, broken layouts or inconsistent styling.
Functional accuracy
Do all buttons lead to the right destinations?
Are the relevant resources available?
Does the correct variation appear for the intended visitor context?
Mobile experience
A headline that looks good on desktop may wrap awkwardly on a smaller screen.
Images may crop differently, and longer copy can alter the balance of the page.
Test each experience across desktop and mobile, not just the original page.
Fallback behaviour
What happens if the visitor has no matching audience information?
What if a field is missing?
What if an image or logo can't be displayed?
The page should still communicate clearly and look professional.
Practical testing scenarios
| Test visitor | Expected experience |
|---|---|
| Financial Services campaign visitor | Financial services content |
| Manufacturing campaign visitor | Manufacturing content |
| Professional Services campaign visitor | Professional services content |
| Visitor without matching context | Original page |
| Visitor with missing optional field | Appropriate fallback content |
If these scenarios work and the complete page remains coherent, you're much closer to being ready to launch.
8. How will you know if it's working?
Personalisation should have a purpose beyond looking different.
The fact that visitors are seeing different headlines is interesting, but it isn't necessarily evidence that the campaign is more effective.
Go back to the objective you defined at the beginning.
What are you hoping to improve?
Perhaps you want more visitors to explore relevant resources. Maybe you're trying to increase enquiries from a particular audience. Or perhaps the objective is to make your existing campaigns more effective without creating additional landing pages.
Choose measurements that help answer those questions.
Look at relevant engagement
Depending on the reporting available through Marketing Guppy and your existing measurement tools, you may be able to review personalised page activity, resource interactions, CTA engagement and subsequent conversions.
It's useful to understand how frequently different experiences are being delivered, but try to connect that information to meaningful visitor behaviour.
Compare experiences where possible
If your traffic volume allows, consider comparing a personalised experience with the original page.
A well-designed comparison can help you understand whether the new messaging appears to influence engagement.
But be cautious about attributing every difference to personalisation.
Campaign audiences, traffic sources and visitor intentions can all influence results.
Learn what matters to each audience
You may discover that Financial Services visitors respond to resources about operational resilience, while Manufacturing visitors engage more with content focused on continuity and efficiency.
Those findings could inform your future campaign messaging as well as your website content.
Personalisation isn't only about adapting a page. It can also help you test which messages resonate with different audiences.
Expand when you have a reason
Once your first campaign is performing reliably, you can consider adding more audiences, targeting specific accounts or personalising additional pages.
You don't have to do everything at once.
Build from what you've learned.
Note: Marketing Guppy and external analytics or CRM systems may provide different reporting capabilities. Check which measures are available in your current setup before planning your evaluation.
9. Your website personalisation launch checklist
Before you send your first visitor.
Use this checklist to make sure your campaign is ready.
Pre-launch checklist
Website personalisation launch checklist — Your website. Different visitors. More relevant experiences.
Your first campaign doesn't need to be perfect, but it should be accurate, relevant and reliable.
10. Start small. Make it relevant. Build from there.
Website personalisation can sound like a complicated undertaking, particularly when you imagine trying to deliver a different experience to every visitor.
But that isn't where you need to begin.
Start with one existing page and a few audiences that have genuinely different priorities.
Work out which messages will help those visitors understand why your solution matters.
Change the elements that make a difference. Leave the rest alone.
Test the experience, publish it and learn from what happens.
Over time, you can expand into more specific account and contact personalisation, additional webpages and more sophisticated campaign programmes.
The important thing is to get started with something useful.
Because your website doesn't have to say exactly the same thing to everyone.
Your website already has the pages. Make them work harder.
Marketing Guppy helps you personalise existing webpages for different audiences, accounts and contacts without rebuilding everything from scratch.
14 days free. No credit card required.