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

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!

    • Recent Topics

    • All new Address Field in Zoho CRM: maintain structured and accurate address inputs

      Availability Update: 29 September 2025: It's currently available for all new sign-ups and for existing Zoho CRM orgs which are in the Professional edition exclusively for IN DC users. 2 March 2026: Available to users in all DCs except US and EU DC. 24

    • Zoho CRM - Email/Message icon for Deal List View

      Hi Team, My idea is to include a message icon at the start of the row of Deals when an unread message has been received. This would really help highlight the Deals where urgent action is required. Thanks for considering this request. Regards, Ashley

    • Is there a way to show contact emails in the Account?

      I know I can see the emails I have sent and received on a Contact detail view, but I want to be able to see all the emails that have been sent and received between all an Accounts Contacts on the Account Detail view. That way when I see the Account detail

    • CRM x WorkDrive: We're rolling out the WorkDrive-powered file storage experience for existing users

      Release plan: Gradual rollout to customers without file storage add-ons, in this order: 1. Standalone CRM 2. CRM Plus and Zoho One DCs: All | Editions: All Available now for: - Standalone CRM accounts in Free and Standard editions without file storage

    • HR Helpdesk Cases

      We have Zoho One Enterprise. I'm trying to find HR Helpdesk Cases, but my UI does not match the documentation. I'm not sure how to move forward.

    • Tip #7 - Siri shortcuts in Zoho CRM

      Hello Everyone, Here is a tip about the 'Siri Shortcuts' feature and how it works in the iOS version of the Zoho CRM mobile app. What are Siri shortcuts? Siri Shortcuts are quick actions across your apps on iOS. They can perform an action automatically

    • Automatic Department and Employee Sync Between Zoho One and Zoho People

      Dear Zoho Support, I'm writing to propose a valuable feature request that would streamline data management and improve user experience within the Zoho ecosystem: automatic synchronization between departments and employees in Zoho One and Zoho People.

    • Nothing triggers a Journey

      I have been on the phone with Zoho support and they claim their development team needs to investigate more. However, I've found this is a pretty standard answer after a call takes any amount of time. After that, it's days and even weeks before it actually

    • Manually Backorder Sales Order and/or Change Sales Order Status

      Is there an option to manually 'backorder' a sales order, or otherwise change it's status?  In some cases, we receive orders for products that are out of stock, but we already have issued POs to our suppliers for replenishment.   Ex- we created a PO on

    • Backorder process review - Automating Removal of Sales Order from "On Hold" When PO is Received

      Hello Zoho Inventory Team, Currently, sales orders in On Hold status are released only when the bill for the purchase order is created. In our workflow, it would be much more efficient if the sales order could automatically move out of On Hold as soon

    • Kaizen #254 - Building a Temporal Lead Score Decay System in Zoho CRM

      Hello, CRM Wizards! Welcome to a fresh week of Kaizen. In this post, we will build a temporal lead score decay system that works alongside your existing scoring rules by introducing percentage-based score decay driven solely by customer inactivity. By

    • Metadata API Access to Functions

      I think it would be incredibly helpful to have api access to every function's code. Our team primarily uses deluge functions to update fields across modules according to business logic. I would like to create a visual dependancy model for our CRM, but

    • API actions/approvals endpoint returns UNAPPROVABLE despite user having full permissions and being the assigned approver

      Hi Team, We are trying to programmatically approve a record via the CRM API but consistently receive an UNAPPROVABLE error, even though the same user can approve the record without issue from the UI. Endpoint called: POST https://www.zohoapis.com/crm/v6/{module}/{record_id}/actions/approvals

    • Upcoming Change: Increased character limits for module and field labels

      To provide greater flexibility in customizing your CRM, we are increasing the maximum character limits for module labels and field labels in Zoho CRM. What's changing? Label Current Limit New Limit Module Label 25 characters 50 characters Subform Module

    • Get a realistic picture of your revenue with Forecast Adjustments in Zoho CRM

      #crm25q1 Dear Customers, We hope you're doing well! Today, we're here with an important enhancement for business decision makers: forecast adjustments. Let's get straight to it! With technology on the rise and CX at its core, businesses are constantly

    • I am not able to check in and checkout in zoho people even location access allowed

      This issue i am facing in mackbook air m1, I allowed location in chrome browser and i also tried in safari but getting similar issue. Please have a look ASAP.

    • WhatsApp Vendors Module

      Hello, so WhatsApp works with the below, mainly with the customer side modules. Can we get functionality on the vendor side modules, i.e., PO, Bills, Vendor Credits, Payments Made, Purchase Received? WhatsApp is often the preferred method of communication

    • Upload ticket attachments via Drag-&-Drop

      Hello, if you want to upload a file to the ticket attachment you need to click the button and use the file browser to select and upload the desired file. In many cases, it would be much more efficient if you could simply drag the file to the browser window...

    • Introducing parent-child ticketing in Zoho Desk [Early access]

      Hello Zoho Desk users! We have introduced the parent-child ticketing system to help customer service teams ensure efficient resolution of issues involving multiple, related tickets. You can now combine repetitive and interconnected tickets into parent-child

    • Elevate your Radar experience: Best practices part 3

      In the Spotlight: Zoho Desk's Radar app Customer support requires human intelligence combined with emotional intelligence. How about these coupled with contextual intelligence? These elevate the customer support experience. When providing support through

    • Migrating my email from GMAIL to ZOHO MAIL..........

      I am a long time GMAIL user and I really only understand how they operate, but after reviewing your tutorials and forums online, it is quite unbelievable how much more and how much more streamlined ZOHO mail is, not to mention ZOHO's wonderful, more advanced capabilities. I do have several questions about transitioning over to ZOHO.  Primarily, where is the best place to start, what do I do first? And how hard is it actually to move all my business and personal accounts over here?  When I sign up

    • Unable to send message;Reason:553 Relaying disallowed. Invalid Domain

      Hi, Now when I try to reply to an email, I see the Unable to send message;Reason:553 Relaying disallowed. Invalid Domain voicemessagedownloader.com error. I tested sending an email when I set it up in the past and it worked. I have checked the Zoho Organization

    • RFID Scanner/Adapter Solution for barcode scanning

      Hello, We will be trialing using barcode scanning for item verification during our picking process. Using a phone or a tablet is awkward and uncomfortable. Are there any Zoho compatible RFID scanners, or an RFID device/adapter that will connect with a

    • Approval Process not retriggering after rejection when stage is manually changed back

      We have an Approval Process on the Opportunities module that triggers when Stage is changed to Negotiation (Execute on: Edit Only). On rejection, a field update action reverts Stage back to Proposal. The issue: after rejection, AE can manually changes

    • Free Webinar Alert! Workdrive + Office Suite in Zoho Workplace: Create, co-edit and collaborate

      Hello Zoho Community! Looking for a better way to create, manage, and collaborate on your business documents? Join our upcoming webinar to discover how Zoho WorkDrive and the Zoho Office Suite (Writer, Sheet, and Show) help teams to work together from

    • Updating Sales orders on hold

      Surely updating irrelevant fields such as shipping date should be allowed when sales orders are awaiting back orders? Maybe the PO is going to be late arriving so we have to change the shipment date of the Sales order ! Not even allowed through the api - {"code":36014,"message":"Sales orders that have been shipped or on hold cannot be updated."}

    • Two-Factor Authentication in Zoho Mail: Add an extra layer of security to your organization

      Account security is a critical aspect of managing any organization's email. With increasing risks of unauthorized access, a single password may not always be sufficient to keep accounts protected. Zoho Mail's Two-Factor Authentication (TFA) addresses

    • Dark Mode - Font Colors Don't Work

      When editing a document in Dark Mode and selecting font colors, they don't show up on screen.  Viewing/editing the same document in Light Mode shows them just fine.

    • API to post drafts for social media

      I we want to post draft posts to our zoho social account and then approve and schedule them within Zoho social. is this possible with for example: https://apis.zoho.com/social/v2/post TIA Jon

    • How to show product cards in your chatbot

      Hey everyone, If you are using Guided Conversations to help customers find products, you have probably run into this problem: the bot gives customers a list of options, but they still have no idea which one to pick. There will be no images, no specs,

    • Changing settings for auto logoff

      I've noticed that when I haven't used Cliq for a while, I have to re-enter my password. That is really clumsy, especially if you have a complicated password. Because it won't be filled in automatically. Is there a way to change that behaviour? We are

    • How do you create invoices before sending them through Zoho Invoice?

      Hi everyone, I'm curious how other businesses handle their invoicing workflow before sending invoices through Zoho Invoice. Do you: Create invoices directly inside Zoho? Prepare them first in another invoice tool or template? Use Excel or Word before

    • ZML Error/Bug

      Hi, I would like to request for your help regarding this kind of behavior. Requested_Start_Time & End_Time - date-time fields https://......#Page:PH_Calendar_Page?reqDate=08-04-2026 https://......#Page:PH_Calendar_Page?reqDate=07-31-2026 https://....#Page:PH_Calendar_Page?reqDate=08-03-2026

    • Item with name in different languate

      Hello, is there a way to have an item with its name in different languages? For example: I sell an item in different markets and I'd like to have a Proposal and the Invoice with the Item Name in a specific language. Rino Bertolotto Zoho Specialist, STESA srl

    • 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

    • Migration of emails from Yandex to Zoho

      I am trying to migrate an yandex mail account to zoho mail account. I am confused with all the related articles/informations in the net. Could someone please outline the process to do it, just thinking about me as a novice with limited knowledge or experience. A couple of questions from the knowledge gained. 1. I believe we have to delete the yandex current MX from the website records and add Zoho MX. What happens to the emails as we remove the mail exchange record. Yandex stops updating emails and

    • Auto-fill from logged-in user's profile for Name Fields in Subforms

      Hi, The Name field is great, but I see you can't tick the Initial Value option of "Auto-fill from logged-in user's profile" when it is on a Subform, why not? Thanks Dan

    • Calling a function within another function

      Hello there, I have just found out that you can simply call up functions in other functions, regardless of the department. You can't create functions with the same name twice, even though you are in a different department. If you try it, you don't get

    • 【続々公開】Zoholics Japan 2026 セッション情報を更新しました！

      ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは！ Zoholics Japan 2026のセッション情報を続々と公開しています！ 今年は3つのトラックで、Zohoの最新情報やAI活用、製品アップデート、 活用事例など、多彩なセッションをお届けします。 現在公開中のセッション（一部） ・Zoho CRM 製品アップデート ・Zoho CRM Plus 製品アップデート ・Zoho Community セッション ・Zoho Desk セッション ・中堅・成長企業の人事DX ～AI時代に何から始めるべきか？～ ・Zoho

    • Zoho CRM Community Digest - July 2026 | Part 1

      Hello everyone, July is here! The first two weeks brought six CRM updates ranging from privacy-ready webforms to a significantly more powerful Layout Rules engine, two community wins worth a look (a dashboard workaround for spotting leads with no activities,

    • Next Page