What Is website personalization, and why should it be on your radar?
Website personalization is the process of tailoring a website's content and experiences to individual visitors based on their behaviors, preferences, and needs. This targeted approach helps businesses improve engagement, boost conversions, and create a more relevant user experience.
In this article we will take a deep dive into what website personalization is and how you can set it up with Umbraco Engage.
Once you have nailed your marketing plans, your SEO is in place, and your paid ads setup is working, you want to make sure the users get the content and digital experiences they are looking for. And this is where website personalization comes in handy.
Table of content:
- Why is website personalization important?
- What is website personalization?
- What are the different types of personalization?
- How does customer journeys and personas play into personalization?
- How does Umbraco Engage enable personalization?
- How do you begin website personalization with Umbraco Engage?
- How do you start with personas and customer journeys in Umbraco Engage?
- Generative AI makes personalization scalable
- Personalization helps driving revenue for companies
- How does Umbraco Engage simplify complex personalization?
- Are there any challenges when it comes to personalization?
- How can businesses use Umbraco Engage to maintain privacy compliance while delivering personalized experiences?
- Why choose Umbraco Engage for website personalization?
Umbraco has been awarded Most Implementable, Best Estimated ROI, Best Results, and Fastest Implementation in the G2 Winter 2025 reports. See all Umbraco G2 reviews
Why is website personalization important?
Imagine walking into a store where everything is tailored just for you—the shelves magically rearrange, the sales clerk knows exactly what you’re looking for, and your favorite coffee is already brewing. That’s what we have personalization for in the digital world. It’s about crafting a website experience that feels like it was made for each individual visitor.
And why is it so important? Because people don’t just like personalized experiences—they expect to get the content and information they need when they need it. Whether it’s product recommendations, relevant content, or even the right conversion point at the right time - personalization makes visitors feel understood and valued. And when people feel valued, they’re more likely to stick around, engage, and convert.
What is website personalization?
First things first: Website personalization is the process of tailoring a website's content, layout, and user experience to meet the unique needs, preferences, and behaviors of each visitor. Rather than delivering a one-size-fits-all experience, personalization ensures that every interaction feels relevant and engaging.
It could be as simple as recommending products based on browsing history or as advanced as dynamically adjusting homepage headlines for returning users. The goal is to deliver the right content to the right person at the right time—creating a seamless and meaningful user journey.
What are the different types of website personalization?
When it comes to website personalization, there are different options. Here are the ones that Umbraco Engage can help you with:
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Implicit personalization: Automatically adjusting content based on user behavior (like pages visited or time spent on a section).
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Campaign-based personalization: Show dynamic content tied to UTM parameters, like highlighting a Black Friday sale for users coming from a specific email campaign.
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Segmented personalization: Serving content to specific audience segments, such as “Returning Shoppers” or “First-Time Visitors.”
These options let you personalize at different levels, ensuring that your website feels dynamic and engaging no matter who visits.
How do customer journeys and personas enhance personalization?
At the heart of personalization are personas and customer journeys, which let you deliver content and experiences that match exactly where users are in their decision-making process. Here’s a clearer example:
Personalized customer journey exampe:
Imagine Theresa is shopping for a new laptop. Here’s how her journey could look with Umbraco Engage:
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Research phase (Awareness):
Theresa lands on your website through a Google search for “Best laptops for video editing.” Umbraco Engage identifies her interest and serves her a blog post titled, “Top 5 Laptops for Video Editing in 2025.” -
Personalized experience: A banner at the end of the article suggests a free comparison guide for high-performance laptops, which Theresa downloads after entering her email address.
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Evaluation phase (Consideration):
After reading the guide, Theresa navigates to the “Professional Laptops” category on your site. Based on Theresa's behavior on our website, Umbraco Engage shows her a comparison page featuring specs for two popular models, including one with advanced video editing features. -
Personalized action: The page highlights user reviews from video editors and a link to a demo video showing how one of the laptops performs under heavy editing tasks.
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Purchase phase (Decision):
Theresa adds the high-performance laptop to her cart but hesitates to complete the checkout. Umbraco Engage triggers a pop-up offering free shipping and a 10% discount for first-time buyers. -
Personalized outcome: Theresa proceeds to a streamlined checkout process, optimized for minimal friction, with pre-filled fields based on her account details.
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Post-Purchase phase (Advocacy):
After purchasing, Theresa receives an email thanking her for her order, along with a link to setup tips for maximizing her new laptop’s performance. -
A few weeks later, Theresa receives a follow-up email offering accessories for her laptop, like external hard drives or ergonomic stands, based on her persona profile.
How does Umbraco Engage make personalization a breeze?
Let me just be honest. At Umbraco, we sell - a marketing suite for your Umbraco Content Management System that offers personalization. We call it Umbraco Engage. Not sure what a CMS is? Check our article about it
Want to show first-time visitors a warm welcome message? Easy. Need to recommend a product based on someone’s visit history to your website? Done. Umbraco Engage simplifies it all, combining data-driven insights with a user-friendly interface so you can focus on creativity while it does the heavy lifting.
Want to see how easy personalization can be? Try our product tour and explore Umbraco Engage in action
How can businesses begin personalizing their website with Umbraco Engage?
Personalization might sound overwhelming, but with Umbraco Engage, you don’t need to tackle everything at once. The platform is designed to make starting small and scaling up easy. Whether you’re defining your first personas or testing simple content tweaks, Engage has your back.
Here’s the step-by-step process to kick things off:
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Define your personas: Use Engage to map out key audience segments based on user behavior, demographics, or interests.
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Map customer journeys: Align your website’s content with each stage of the user journey—Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Advocacy.
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Start small: Begin with manageable personalization projects, like swapping out homepage headlines for returning users or showcasing popular products based on browsing history.
The above of course sounds easier than done. But I bet you have some sort of idea of your personas already. Sounds “short and simple”, right? Well, there’s a bit more to it. We will cover that in the next chapter.
How do you start with personas and customer journeys in Umbraco Engage?
Now that you understand the importance of personalization, let’s explore how to build the foundation for tailored experiences by defining personas and customer journeys.
1. Understanding your target audience
Before diving into personalization, it’s crucial to know who you’re personalizing for. This starts with identifying your target audience. Here’s how to get started:
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Identify key customers: Start with the customers you enjoy working with the most—those who bring value to your business and align with your mission.
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Cluster by job titles or roles: Break down your target audience into 3–6 clusters, such as "Decision-Makers," "Budget Approvers," or "End Users." This helps narrow your focus and define personas.
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Create personas: Assign sticky, memorable names like “Data-Driven Dana” or “Budget-Conscious Ben” to each cluster. This makes internal discussions about personalization strategies easier and more relatable.
You can create segments in Umbraco Engage. These will be used to automatically apply personalization towards users that meets certain criteria. Engage allows you to create temporary and core segments like a 'Black Friday campaign' and a core segment like 'New potential customer has something in the shopping cart' .
Umbraco Engage allows you to further refine your personas and customers with built in reports, such as segment potential, pageviews, sessions and profiles.
2. Motivating your personas
Once your personas are defined, it’s time to understand what drives them. Ask yourself:
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What challenges does this persona face, and how can your offerings solve them?
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What are their goals, and how do they measure success?
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Are there any fears or barriers that may prevent them from engaging?
If you’re unsure, don’t hesitate to reach out to your customers. A quick phone call or survey can uncover valuable insights. For example, you might learn that “Eco Emmet” values transparency about sustainable sourcing, or “Tech-Savvy Theresa” prefers in-depth product demos.
3. Bringing personas to life
To make your personas more actionable:
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Add visuals: Use photos or illustrations to make each persona feel more real. Umbraco Engage even offers a library of default persona profile images to simplify this step or you can define your own.
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Provide context: Include a short bio, professional background, and personal goals to give your personas depth.
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Link to data: Tie personas to the data collected through Umbraco Engage so you can track how visitors align with these profiles in real time.
Personas in Umbraco Engage can easily be setup in Umbraco Engage, with descriptions, a certain color and images for your personas
Customer journeys are easy to create and edit in Umbraco Engage. You can add descriptions for each step, colors and an image.
You can have multiple customer journeys. It all depends on what your strategy is.
4. Mapping customer journeys
A persona is only part of the story. To truly personalize, map out customer journeys that guide each persona through the stages of engagement with your brand:
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Awareness: How does this persona discover your site? Use blogs, videos, or resources to grab their attention.
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Consideration: What helps them evaluate your product or service? Highlight comparisons, reviews, and success stories.
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Decision: What removes friction and closes the deal? Simplify checkout flows or offer personalized discounts.
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Advocacy: How do you turn buyers into loyal advocates? Send follow-up emails with helpful resources or exclusive perks.
For example, “Eco Emmet” may start with a blog post about sustainable living, download a guide on eco-friendly products, and then be nudged toward a purchase with a free shipping offer.
5. Leveraging Umbraco Engage
With your personas and journeys mapped out, Umbraco Engage takes the guesswork out of implementation:
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Automatically assigns visitors to personas based on real-time behavior.
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Tracks customer journeys to ensure the content matches their current stage.
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Enables small-scale personalization experiments, like changing homepage headlines for new vs. returning visitors.
Pro tip: Not sure where to start?
Head over to our interactive product tour of the personalization engine in Umbraco Engage or book a Discovery Call to learn
Book discovery call Take product tour
With Umbraco Engage you get powerful tools to apply content scoring, so you can score each individual page towards a certain persona or step in your customer journey.
Generative AI makes personalization scalable
Personalization has had a reputation for being a very resource-heavy discipline, as you need to tailor your messaging based on your user personas.
But with the rise of LLMs and generative AI like ChatGPT and Gemini, personalization is more accessible than ever for companies and marketing teams of all sizes. The tools make it easier to craft tailored content quickly, efficiently, and at scale.
One of the biggest hurdles in personalization has always been the sheer volume of content needed to make it work. That’s where LLMs step in. Need multiple variations of a product description to appeal to different personas? Done. Want to brainstorm personalized email subject lines? Easy.
Personalization brings revenue to companies
Personalization isn’t just about making your website look smarter—it’s a proven strategy to drive tangible business results. Businesses that embrace personalization see measurable benefits such as:
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Higher engagement: Personalized content keeps visitors on your site longer, reducing bounce rates and increasing time spent.
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Improved customer retention: Users who feel understood are more likely to return and become loyal customers.
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Increased revenue: Tailored product recommendations and dynamic CTAs can lead to higher average order values and better conversion rates.
For example, e-commerce brands using personalized product suggestions often see conversion rates increase.
How does Umbraco Engage simplify complex personalization?
One of the standout features of Umbraco Engage is its ease of use. Here’s how it takes the complexity out of personalization:
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No-code tools: Marketers can create, test, and refine personalized campaigns without needing developer support.
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Seamless CMS integration: Engage works directly within Umbraco CMS, so there’s no need to jump between platforms or juggle multiple tools.
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Real-time adjustments: Want to tweak personalization on the fly? Engage lets you make instant changes and see the impact right away.
The platform empowers businesses to focus on strategy and creativity while leaving the technical heavy lifting to Engage.
Explore Umbraco and personalization
Do you want to see it for yourself? Try out our interactive product tour of personalization in Umbraco Engage
What challenges and pitfalls come with personalization?
Of course, personalization is not the magic pill that will just fix everything. It comes with implications, and it will require some work to get it all right.
I see privacy and compliance as the biggest potential risks. But fear not - you can overcome this if you play the game right!
How can businesses use Umbraco Engage to maintain privacy compliance while delivering personalized experiences?
Privacy compliance and personalization might seem like opposing forces, but with Umbraco Engage, they work hand-in-hand. The platform prioritizes ethical data practices, ensuring businesses can deliver tailored experiences without compromising user trust or breaking regulations.
Here's how it’s done:
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Respect user consent:
The first step you need to work around is to respect the user and only use their data if they consent. This is almost industry standard today with the widespread usage of consent management platforms, but a platform doesn’t solve anything if you do not use it with the right intentions. So make sure that your setup, however you prefer to do it, fundamentally respects the users and only collects data if they consent. Collect only the data you need.
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Focus on first-party data:
Umbraco Engage operates on first-party data collected directly from user interactions with your site. This ensures accuracy, reliability, and compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA. Unlike third-party data, which is increasingly unreliable, first-party data is transparent and validated by direct user engagement. Second to that, third-party data becomes increasingly unreliable and should not be at the center of your strategy.
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Store data securely:
The third step is to get the data into the hands of those who can use it. And by data, I am talking about the validated first-party data that is the core part of your strategy here.
This is where we can finally move on from personalization being a buzzword to it being something practical.
Once you have a solid foundation of first-party data, it’s much easier to look at each data set and consider how you can use it to make an impact.
The bottom line: Why choose Umbraco Engage for website personalization?
Delivering tailored experiences doesn’t have to be complicated. Umbraco Engage combines powerful tools with a user-friendly interface to make personalization accessible for businesses of all sizes.
Ready to create unforgettable digital experiences?
Explore our interactive demo and see how Umbraco Engage can help you transform your website into a personalization powerhouse.
Explore Umbraco and personalization
Do you want to see it for yourself? Try out our interactive product tour of personalization in Umbraco Engage