Did you know?#3: How to target and run your experiment based on custom audience segments in PageSense

Whatever kind of online business you're running, defining your target audience is the key factor to delivering relevant messages and further positioning your brand in the industry. Most marketing efforts revolve around this basic strategy of segmenting people who have similar needs, values, or characteristics and later targeting them with products or services meant to appeal to these ideal audience groups.  

Luckily, the same concept applies to website testing and optimization processes. By choosing a target audience for your experiment, you get to decide whom you should focus on and where you should run your experiments on your site. This method of audience targeting helps you reach the right consumers interested in your products or services with relevant messaging rather than entire audience groups who are less likely to convert on your website.

So, how do you target the right audience for your experiment? 

Using Zoho PageSense's audience targeting, you can both target basic audience segments (for instance, visitors coming to your site for the first time, visitors from a social media platform, and more) and tailor your own segments using the custom audience feature.

In today's post, we'll learn about what custom targeted audience segments are and how to successfully build your own custom audience condition in PageSense to boost your website's conversions.

A custom audience in PageSense is a more refined approach of audience targeting. This feature lets you target and run your experiment to more precise subgroups or subsets of audiences based on visitor parameters like their geography, age, gender, browser used, purchase behavior, language, or industry type, which cannot be done using the preset audience segmentation options available in PageSense. Furthermore, the option allows you to create a more powerful combination of audience groups using the ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ operations.

Say, for example, you run an ecommerce website and you want to A/B test the revamped product pages to visitors coming only from the United States region AND who access your website using Desktop devices. This could easily be done by manually creating custom audience conditions in PageSense as explained below:

1. Click the +Custom Audience button on the AUDIENCE page of your experiment.
   
   
2. Enter a title and description for the custom segment you want to create.
   
   
3. From the Segment dropdown, choose the modifier and value for the selected audience segment as shown in the screenshot. Learn more about the different types of custom audience segments and the modifier conditions available in PageSense. 
   
   
   
4. Ensure you choose the condition as ‘AND’ or 'OR' depending on the segment you want to create.
   
   
5. From the Segment dropdown, choose the second modifier and value for the selected audience segment as shown in the screenshot.
   The final selection looks like:
   
   
6. Click the Save Audience button.
   The saved segment will appear under the Custom Segments section across all of your experiments in PageSense and you can apply the same for any experiment.

Below are a few examples that show you the most effective ways to define custom audiences in PageSense for running your experiments better:

Target your experiment by geographical location
If you're looking to expand your online business to international audiences and want to understand which city or country markets are good for your business, choose to target your experiments to audiences based on the location.

Targeting your experiment by your visitors' geographic location, such as country, city, or region, is a powerful option when you want to show personalized web page content or run advertisement campaigns that match the interest of audiences from specific areas. This type of targeting is driven by factors like local festivals celebrated, popular regional news, tourism attractions, or business events happening in a region.

For example, say you own an ecommerce site, and you want to show personalized product recommendations to visitors from United Kingdom during the Christmas season. In this case, you can create a custom audience segment that targets your experiment page to visitors from this particular location as shown in the screenshot below.


Note: You can also use this option to target your experiment based on the languages spoken by visitors in different countries.

Target your experiment by query parameters
While running ad campaigns, it's important to both target the right consumers and provide the most relevant information to them on your website. If you find the right user who clicks on your ad, but the landing page for that ad isn’t customized, that conversion could be lost.

Targeting your experiment to visitors who reach your website pages that include (or exclude) a certain query string in their URLs could be useful when you want to understand the effectiveness of different ad campaigns on your website. This is usually tied to audiences who come through a specific utm_source like Facebook or Google and utm_campaigns like paid ads, Google Adwords, and more.

For example, say you own an online car dealership website and you want to redirect customers who click on a paid ad campaign with the utm_campaign=luxurycars to a landing page displaying luxury vehicles with prices and offers. For this, you can create a custom audience segment that explicitly targets your landing pages to visitors who contain this particular query string as shown in the screenshot below.

Target your experiment by user information
To achieve a specific goal or purpose of your online business, you will sometimes need to target your experiment to visitors with exact custom attributes such as age, email address, subscription plan, fields of interest, gender, marital status, or job role on your website. These attributes or visitor information can be collected when a user completes a form on your website, such as a signup, contact, purchase, or any other sort.

Targeting your experiment to visitors based on specific user attributes can help deliver the right message to the right audience and improve brand experience with ease. This is also considered the most precise method of audience targeting as it makes visitors stand out from the wide segment of users on your site.
 
For example, let's say you run a SaaS business and you want to show a personalized pricing page that offers an additional 30-day period to visitors who are subscribed to the Premium plan. In this case, you can create a custom audience segment to target your experiment to visitors who match this specific user attribute and value as shown in the screenshot below.

 
Note that to use 'user information' in audience targeting, you need to add an additional code snippet to your experiment page as explained in the steps here.

Target your experiment by weather/climatic conditions

Do you see your website sell more products when the temperature rises? Or does your tourism business attract more new bookings during cooler seasons?

 

Targeting your experiment based on the local weather of the visitors coming to your website is another modern technique used by marketers to craft influential website content, product pages, and ad campaigns. Weather-based audience targeting allows businesses to anticipate patterns of demand and tap into the needs and purchase intentions of customers during different seasons of the year. It's also a great way to gain a competitive advantage and increase the average value of orders and conversions on a website.

 

For example, say you run an ecommerce site and want to create a personalized homepage title for visitors living in climatic zones with temperatures below 41°F/5°C. In this case, you can create a custom audience segment to target your personalization experience based on audience's local weather as shown in the screenshot below.

Target your experiment by visitor activity
Visitors coming to your website will have different intentions and behaviors. For example, some might be looking to subscribe to your newsletter, some might be checking out new product releases, and others might just be there for window shopping or research purposes. If you're going to show the same home/landing page content to all visitors, you're definitely going to lose conversions and sales.

Targeting your experiment based on what pages your visitor interacts with on your site and what actions they take (or do not take) can be a great way to provide a personalized website experience during their next visit. This includes buttons clicked, products viewed, items bought, and other actions your visitor performs, revealing what your audience wants, avoids, and purchases. 

Using such specific visitor metrics, you can learn why specific actions or events on the site were not successful and later reach customers with more apt content or product offers based on their current activity.
 

For example, say you run an online tourism website and want to provide customized tourist packages with attractive coupon codes to customers who viewed the Adventure tourism package but exited your web page without completing a booking. In this case, you can create a custom audience segment to target your experiment for these segments of visitor interest and behavior as shown in the screenshot below. 

Note that to use 'visitor activity' in audience targeting, you need to add an additional code snippet to your experiment page as explained in the steps here.


Currently, weather-, user-, and visitor-activity-based audience targeting options are only available for personalization experiments in PageSense. However, the user and visitor activity(custom dimensions) based segmentation option is available under report filtering across all of the experiments in PageSense except for push notifications. Learn how to filter reports based on custom dimensions.

Target your experiment by specific referral site URLs

Depending on the ways you market your website online, you'll likely have numerous different referral sources. Analyzing which source brings in more traffic and revenue to your business is a surefire way to get more traffic from multiple channels. Targeting your experiment based on referral URLs—sources that your visitors came from, such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Quora, influencer blogs, and other external sites—can help you promote your website and products on these specific channels. 

 
For example, say you own an ecommerce site, and you want your experiment to only target visitors referred by 'facebook.com'. In this case, you can create a custom audience segment to target visitors from this specific Referral site as shown in the screenshot below. 

 

Bonus tip: Have no clear target audience in mind to run your experiments? Or don't know how to decide where to start when segmenting a target customer audience? Consider these points in choosing the right target audience segments:

• Do you have seasonal-only customers or customers who are only interested in certain types of products, services, or events?
  
• Are you an organization that needs to send different content to partners, sponsors, users, or other patrons?
  
• Does it matter if your contacts are local, domestic, or international?
  
• Have you thought about the requirements of users based on different weather conditions?
  

Was that useful? Please leave us your comment/feedback in the comment box below.

Are you looking to create a new custom audience segment to target in your experiment but aren't sure how to implement it? Just write to us at support@zohopagesense.com and we will be happy to guide you.

Start learning. Start customizing!

• Topic Participants

• Balarohini Paulraj

• Sticky Posts

• [Live Webinar] How to maximize your conversions using existing website traffic

  Hello all, Did you know that on an average only 0.1% of your traffic converts? The rest are either heading towards your competitors or dropping off without being able to find what they came for. When you want to increase your conversions, it's natural

• A/B Testing Idea #2: Make your headlines sound super cool.

  Hello everyone, We're back with our second post in the CRO testing idea series. If you missed the first post, please check it out here: "Place irresistible and clear CTAs." In today's post, we'll look at how to effectively A/B test your headline content.

• A/B Testing Idea #1: Place irresistible and clear CTA buttons

  Are you wasting much of your time and effort A/B testing every single idea that pops into your head, yet you're not generating sufficient traffic to your website? Don't worry—we've got you.   We'd like to introduce you to the A/B Testing Ideas learning

• Did you know?#3: How to target and run your experiment based on custom audience segments in PageSense

  Whatever kind of online business you're running, defining your target audience is the key factor to delivering relevant messages and further positioning your brand in the industry. Most marketing efforts revolve around this basic strategy of segmenting

• Did you know?#2: How to filter your report by custom date range in PageSense

  Do you want to quickly view your experiment analysis or responses over different time periods? Want to effortlessly compare the performance of your website by specific weeks, months, or years? Also, see whether your new marketing strategies or efforts

• Recent Topics

• Is there a way to sync Tags between CRM and Campaigns/Marketing Hub?

  I wonder if there is a way to synch the tags between CRM and Marketing-Hub / Campaigns?

• Zoho Books recurring invoicing link to a Zoho CRM Deal?

  With the Zoho CRM Finance Integration setup, normally when creating an invoice via Zoho CRM Finance Integration on a Deal, it creates the invoice in Zoho Books with the CRM Deal *Potential link for that invoice. Alternatively, if you create the invoice

• Editing Estimates

  Hi team, How do I delete line items in an estimate when editing it? I can't see any option to do this - no X, no trashcan, no drop down... And how do I revert to the original estimate after cloning? I cloned to see if the option to edit were disabled

• Drop Down Menu - Adding up values

  I have a form that has 22 drop down fields each having a value of 0-10 to choose from. Is it possible to have it add up the total value of those selected numbers and have it tally it up in another field at the end? So example: if each of the 22 fields

• Cross Module Fields Merging between Zoho Sign and Zoho CRM for custom module

  Hello everyone, I've been exploring custom integration between Zoho Sign and Zoho CRM, and I've encountered some interesting findings and would need advanced help. To integrate Zoho Sign with Zoho CRM, there are two primary methods: Installing the extension

• WO Completion Status Not Updating Automatically

  Hello Latha, Hope you are doing well. Over the past few days, we have been facing an issue with WO completion. When an AP is marked as complete, the work order status is not automatically updating to “Completed,” and we have to mark it manually. Could

• Removing Custom Modules

  Hello Everyone, I'm trying to remove custom modules from my Zoho CRM. I've ran into the issue, where I'm unable to delete the Modules because there are lookup fields in the fields associated with other modules. When I attempt to delete the modules, they are grayed out and I'm unable to remove them.  Can I please get help on removing the modules or resetting the entire Zoho CRM to its Out of Box settings with out having to delete my account? Thanks SC

• Calculation on form submit not wokring unless i click F5

  I'm using the built in on succesful form submission option and running the code below but when i click submit my form just gets stuck with the blue loading icon and nothing happens until i click F5 and then the page reloads and the calculation does actually

• Territories as filters

  The territory function within the CRM is great for controlling record access and managing a sales organization however, territories are not available as a filter options within the CRM when creating reports or dashboard components. Adding the ability

• Announcing Zoho Sheet desktop app for macOS and Windows (Beta)

  Hello Sheet users, We know you’ve been waiting for this one. It has always been the top priority on our roadmap to provide a single native desktop app for macOS and Windows that works both online and offline. Today, we are excited to announce that the

• Tip #69 - Exploring Technician Console: Blacken Screen - 'Insider Insights'

  Hello Zoho Assist Community! Imagine a scenario where you are providing remote support to a customer at a busy front desk. The issue involves their billing software, and fixing it means navigating through sensitive customer records, payment details, and

• Free virtual webinar: Zoho Sign for Q1 2026

  Hi there! We’ve packed this quarter with some of our biggest updates yet—and you won’t want to miss what’s new in Zoho Sign. Watch this video for a quick rundown: Join our upcoming webinar for a complete walkthrough of the latest features, enhancements,

• On Duty Requests - Zoho People Data

  Hello Team, We are currently using the On Duty Form to record Work From Home (WFH) requests in our organization. However, we are facing an issue where pending On Duty requests are not appearing in the Attendance Module. For example, if I submit On Duty

• On Duty Requests - Zoho People Data

  Hello Team, We are currently using the On Duty Form to record Work From Home (WFH) requests in our organization. However, we are facing an issue where pending On Duty requests are not appearing in the Attendance Module. For example, if I submit On Duty

• Zoho Cliq not working on airplanes

  Hi, My team and I have been having this constant issue of cliq not working when connected to an airplane's wifi. Is there a reason for this? We have tried on different Airlines and it doesn't work on any of them. We need assistance here since we are constantly

• Tabular View Report | Scale To Fit Screen

  Please add the option to scale Tabular View reports to fit the screen. I constantly have to adjust the column size of Tabular View reports to fit various screen sizes and it just looks messy. You can see in the screenshot below there is a blank gap after

• RouteIQ for Zoho FSM

  Beste, Zou wel top zijn dat we een RouteIQ hebben voor FSM aangezien we constant moeten zien wat de beste route is voor onze monteurs. Nu moeten we een speciale aparte programma hebben om de beste route te berrekenen voor onze monteurs aangezien de planning

• Ignroe_filtrers and drill through

  I have two charts, where one is connected to the other using drill-through. The issue is with the second chart (the drill-through target). It contains an aggregation formula that uses the ignore_filters function. Under normal conditions, the formula works

• Issue with Zoho Sheets

  Edit: Small Error of Opening doc and losing entire formatting while downloading to *.xlsx format. Also my formulas don't work while opening a document downloaded from Zoho sheets, since the colors aren't matched to the correct data. Even though the data

• Query on Tracking Visitor Activity with Zoho Forms & SalesIQ

  I have a query regarding Zoho Forms, Zoho SalesIQ, and Zoho CRM. I have embedded a Zoho Forms form on my website, and I’m trying to understand if it’s possible to capture a user’s website activity (such as pages visited, visit count, etc.) when they submit

• Option+C shortcut conflict

  In the latest Cliq release, you introduced `Option+C` shortcut to start a new audio call. In Polish, `option+C` is used for letter `ć`. I changed this button combo but `Option+C` is still being blocked and doesn't allow me to write letter `ć`.

• Zoho Desk - Event Calendar View

  Hi Desk team, Are there any plans to introduce a calendar or timeline view for Events in Zoho Desk? It would be very helpful if we could see Events visually in a calendar and/or timeline. This is very helpful when desk side support activities need to

• Email notification for followers

  Is there a way to enable email notification for followers of a support ticket? ie: Ticket #123 is owned by Agent#1, Agent#2 adds themselves as a follower. Whenever ticket #123 receives an email from the customer, Agent#1 receives an email. Agent#2 would

• Introducing SlyteUI : From Idea to a Working Interface in Minutes

  Hello everyone! Are you spending hours building basic UIs? Does even the smallest customization feel like a major task? CRM customization should feel intuitive and straightforward, not time consuming or exhausting. SlyteUI makes this possible by simplifying

• Cross Module Filtering – Use Fields from Lookup modules in Custom Views criteria and Advanced Filters

  Hello everyone, Zoho CRM now enables you to achieve deeper filtering of records in a module, using fields of a lookup, thereby enhancing your data management experience manifold. This filtering based on lookup module fields is now available in advanced

• Update to CRM Custom Buttons: Collect Users' Location

  Hello everyone! Buttons in Zoho CRM allow you to extend the default CRM capabilities for your bespoke business needs. It provides the flexibility to connect to any third-party application to perform necessary actions. Wouldn't it be better, if those buttons

• Super Admin Logging in as another User

  How can a Super Admin login as another user. For example, I have a sales rep that is having issues with their Accounts and I want to view their Zoho Account with out having to do a GTM and sharing screens. Moderation Update (8th Aug 2025): We are working

• Can I add Conditional merge tags on my Templates?

  Hi I was wondering if I can use Conditional Mail Merge tags inside my Email templates/Quotes etc within the CRM? In spanish and in our business we use gender and academic degree salutations , ie: Dr., Dra., Sr., Srta., so the beginning of an email / letter

• Reading emails sent from Zoho

  Hi there, How do I view an email sent from Zoho, for example an email which contains an estimate? I can see there is a tab in the screen for that estimate which is labelled 'Emails' and I can see a summary of the email sent listed there, but I cannot

• Enable integration of CRM CPQ functionality for ZohoOne customers using Zoho Finance application

  Hi there. I can't believe I'm needing to launch this idea as I would have thought this was a little obvious. Following a number of conversations with the technical team it's become evident that the CPQ functionality within CRM cannot integrate with Zoho

• Creating packages according to actual shipping processes

  Hi community. I would like to ask a question to see if there's a better method or workflow for the creation of packages in Zoho Inventory. There is a little confusion in some of Zoho's language relating to the use of term Packing Slip when connected to

• Changing naming convention for Estimates

  Hi there, How do I customise the naming of the filenames for estimates when sending them? Currently they are named literally just ES11.PDF or whatever the number of the estimate is. There is no Company name, description of the work, customer name, date

• Lead Entry Strategy

  Hi there. Was wondering if anybody could share their strategy around lead entry into Zoho CRM. One of the challenges with Zoho CRM is a lead requires a last name. We want to capture companies that operate within our addressable market, and we often don't

• Email templates for estimates

  Hi there, When I send an estimate the option to choose a template appears. However it is common to need to make some minor personalizations and modifications to the email before sending ie. adding a second person to the greeting, or adding a small note

• Kaizen #78 : How to disable clone record?

  Hello everyone! Welcome back to another interesting Kaizen post. In this post, let us discuss a workaround solution for the use case - How to disable clone record for a user. Requirement Consider that you want to disable the clone option for the Deals

• Mail bounces due to bad reputation

  Good evening. I'm seeing these errors from both hotmail/outlook and yahoo, as well as hard bounce from Virgin Media and talktalk for some time now. Bounce category: Connection issues Reason: uncategorized-bounce Message: 4.7.650 The mail server [136.143.188.237]

• How to Automate an Unsubscribe based on Scoring

  I automatically assign a negative point score to bounced emails and would like to automate unsubscription of these emails from our Campaigns, without losing the contact data. (Oftentimes the lead is no longer at a business, but I want to keep the business

• Set Default Status of Assembly to "Assembled" When Entered in UI

  I've just discovered the new "confirmed" status of Assemblies within Inventory. While I understand the intent of this (allowing for manufacturing planning and raw material stock allocation), it was initially confusing to me when manually entering some

• Connection to other user

  Zoho Cliq handles sharing of Custom OAuth Connections that require individual user logins.

• Support Bots and Automations in External Channels

  Hello Zoho Cliq Team, How are you? We actively use Zoho Cliq for collaboration, including with our external developers. For this purpose, external channels are a key tool since they work seamlessly within the same interface as all of our other channels

• Next Page