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

    • Zoho Sign / Prefill By You - Editable by Them!

      Zoho Sign seems to have two field options available - an empty field for signer(s) to complete or a field that has been prefilled by you, that becomes read only once sent.  What I would like is an option on the pre-filled by you fields, to leave them

    • How to sort a data in summary report with Monthly ?

      Hi Team, Can any one help me out how to sort a data based on monthly, Month was shuffled based on aliphatic order. i want to sort the below data monthy?

    • Is this link the transparent pixel used to track opens?

      Could someone please help me identify this highlighted link? It is automatically created by Zoho and a lot of contacts receiving campaigns will click on this link. I don't believe that it is the "update your preferences link" because on the Link Clicks

    • Kiosk Studio wrap-up | How our community used kiosks in 2024

      Hello, everyone! Happy new year! The end of 2024 has been busy, and 2025 promises to be bigger and better. As we ring in the new year, let's rewind and look at Kiosk Studio, our no-code customization tool. The past 300 days have seen the CRM community

    • Zoho Crm - Inventory Integration

      Hello, I need help about Map Fields between CRM and Inventory. For Example, I can't match amount of stock between these 2. I can put opening stock number  in Inventory but I can't see it on CRM. Also I want to see categories and parent categories on Inventory, in CRM too. Best Regards.

    • Inventory Valuation Method Feature

      Zoho added another feature so called Inventory Valuation Method of each Item. This is actually good to see and it will benefit us so much but I have a question on this. For Existing Items that already have transactions, Zoho made it a default and assumed

    • Where is the customization and extendibility of zoho inventory?

      After delving into zoho one subscription to test out systems we need for our business, I'm really disappointed after working in Zoho Inventory. Its features and customizability are extremely lacking compared to the other tools like CRM. In our case we

    • Organization Variables - Restrict Access

      Currently, there is no way to restrict the access to organization variables. This leads to a problem when storing API related values that should be kept secret as anyone with access to create and edit email templates, workflow rules, or inventory templates

    • Values in multi pick list are not copied to copied deal

      Hi, After a deal is completed in our sales funnel we copy the deal to an automatically created new deal in our project funnel. All fields are copied properly, but only a Multi Pick List is not copied. How can we copy the selected values in this field

    • Zoho takes too long to load...

      I am based in Europe and in the last couple of weeks, Zoho CRM takes minutes even to load modules. Is there a specific reason this is happening? Is this happening to other people?

    • Modules are continuously loading

      Hi! We are not able to open the task modules, it keeps continuously loading

    • Execution failure when fetching a Name field from another app

      In creator I have one app [Employee Directory] with a form [Employees]. One of the fields is a name field called [Name]. Here is a sample that works, if executed from the Employees app: test_Employee = Employees[Name.first_name == "Alex"]; info test_Employee.Name;

    • Accessing Subform Data using getRecordByID

      I am getting data from Zoho Creator using deluge zoho.creator.getRecordByID task, from another application. The report contains a subform, and that subform is in the detail view of the report. I do not appear to have any subform data in the JSON response,

    • Allow "add new" option to picklists and multiselection fields from add or edit pages

      Hello zoho, please insert an add option (ie +)sign) to pick and multiselect fields so we can add new options while entering or editing records. For example. in my lead module, while adding a new record, I realized I had a new lead source. I went to my

    • Allow customer to select meeting duration

      I would love to see a feature where I can give the customer the option to select the meeting duration they require based on a dropdown list which I have predefined in the service settings. For example: 15, 30, 45, 60, 90 minutes.

    • Can you internally tag/categorize posts for campaigns?

      Would love to easily sort through posts by tags or categories (i.e. we have multiple memberships and share studies from each. It would be nice to pull reports in a second for "membership A studies" for a campaign etc.).

    • Function 56: Automatically enable the option for customers to pay via bank account

      Hello everyone and welcome back to our series! One of the key features of Zoho Books is its integration with multiple payment gateways, allowing you to receive online payments for your invoices. This ensures faster payments, automates payment tracking

    • Connect multiple Facebook ad accounts to Zoho Social

      Hi there. I'm doing the Facebook Ads and Zoho Social integration to automate the leads that come from Potential Customer campaigns on Facebook to Zoho CRM. I have a company (1 fanpage, 1 brand), but within the business or brand on Facebook, I manage several

    • Custom service report or Zoho forms integration

      Hello, So far the experience with Zoho FSM and the integration with Books has been good, however there are limitations with service reports. As with my business, many organisations send technicians to different types of jobs that call for a different

    • Creation of Path and subpath

      In order to improve the structure of the website for better organization, I would like to consider that when publishing a page, it can be within a section and sub-section. For example, if I have an events option in the menu, I can put past events and

    • Assign task owner using Deluge

      Use Case: Each task is a document development task wherein once the developer has completed the first draft, the next step in the process is for the document to be QA-ed by the project's assigned auditor. Thus, I am currently working out a blueprint where

    • Using AVG in SQL Query

      My current SQL Query is: SELECT "Client Info", avg("Revenue") FROM "Funded Deals" GROUP BY "Client Info" The current table that this is creating: Client Info avg(Revenue) Previous 4175 1st - New 3411 1st - Old 3013 Renew 3069 While this works as I had

    • Meta and Facebook data report discrepancy

      I have been currently gathering manually facebook follower data thru meta. In zoho marketing plus the social media reporting only allows for page likes, and so there is a discrepancy with the data. please the difference in files attached. Is there way

    • Links in Instagram

      Hi there, I have been using Later for a while now but keen to come back to Zoho Social as Later doesn't offer tagging of pages on Facebook but they offer something Zoho doesn't. You can add a link to your bio which opens up your profile feed where images

    • If I turn off the Task Prefix & ID in the Portal Configuration section, will it remove the dependencies in my projects?

      Hi all, basically the title, I am new to zoho projects and trying to get my head around some basic principles. Unfortunately I have not found this information via the search option and after deleting yesterday some Phases I had created in the Phases tab,

    • Enter dates in tasks with just "tue" or "+10" or "5d" ???

      Is there any way to enter due dates in tasks without typing the whole date or making time consuming clicks in the calendar? I don't see anything online in the help or third party videos.

    • Multiple time zones in zoho projects

      We are working in an international team. We need to set up different time zones in the organizational settings or at least for one project within zoho projects. Any ideas or help? Thx in advance

    • Zoho Desk : Field for 'Layout'

      I have many different layouts on my helpdesks and I want to be able to identify the stats for each one, however I can not find the field in the raw data from the Zoho Desk datasource. I thought it might be in the "Tickets" table but there is nothing.

    • Customize Zoho One Dashboard and URL?

      Hi everyone, Is there a way to customize my Zoho One URL to be different from the default portal URL? The current portal URL is: one.zoho.com/zohoone/[organization] I want to map it to its own standalone domain that we own. eg) domain.com instead of one.zoho.com/zohoone/[organization]

    • Enable Sending Direct Messages to Self in Zoho Cliq

      Hi, I would like to request a feature enhancement for Zoho Cliq to allow users to send direct messages to themselves. Currently, Zoho Cliq does not have the option to send a direct message to oneself. While creating a channel with just one member (the

    • JOB Sheet can not send PDF as service rapports and more info needed other topic

      Goedendag, - Jullie hebben nu job sheet erin gedaan en dar is echt super goed, enkel kunnen we de werkbon ( JOB sheet) nu niet verzenden als PDF als een service rapport naar onze hoofdaannemer hoe we dat nu doen als bewijs van de levering van het werk

    • Tax Deduction at Source (TDS)

      I issued a sale invoice outside UAE , the customer apply TDS on the invoice , i checked my Zoho ( professional version ) i couldn't find the option of Enable TDS to let it appear while posting the incoming payment , please how to make it and how to configure

    • UNAPPROVED record management

      When the unapproved list of duplicates is long, one needs the some tools to manage them - when this list has over 1500 records, we cannot manage it without some tools, such as: 1. The ability to apply a filter - ie similar to creating a CREATE a NEW VIEW

    • Zoho mail filter Add to WorkDrive doesnt't work

      Hello, We have a problem with using the filter in the email. So, we want that when a bulk payment confirmation from the online store arrives, this email is automatically saved in HTML format on the drive using the action 'Add to Zoho WorkDrive -> Email

    • Introducing Zia GenAI: Zoho's Native Generative AI for Zoho Desk

      Hello everyone, Zia GenAI is available on Early Access for Zoho Desk Enterprise subscribers. Kindly fill out this Registration Form to request early access. We are excited to announce the Beta release of Zia GenAI in Zoho Desk, now available through our

    • Add blueprint buttons to listview and kanban

      Hello, just started to use the Blueprints feature - really useful. I have one suggestion to help this work even better - can there be transition buttons that appear on the top of listview & Kanban? Maybe an option as well - "Blueprint transitions appear

    • Deleted message in SPAM

      In one of my gmail accounts (getnickifit@gmail.com) I had an email from PayPal in the SPAM folder. I thought I was moving the message to the inbox from the zoho mobile but it looks like it was deleted. It is no where to be found--inbox, trash, etc. Can it be restored?

    • CRM x WorkDrive: File storage for new CRM signups is now powered by WorkDrive

      Availability Editions: All DCs: All Release plan: Released for new signups in all DCs. It will be enabled for existing users in a phased manner in the upcoming months. Help documentation: Documents in Zoho CRM Manage folders in Documents tab Manage files

    • Multiple Facebook Pages under Single Brand

      Hi everyone, I'd like to know if there is a possibility of connecting multiple Facebook pages under a single brand on Zoho? At the moment, there are different Facebook pages of a single brand and would want to keep under the same brand on Zoho as we

    • Zoho Books Estimate to Zoho CRM quote?

      I'm not sure why this isnt automatic, but maybe I'm missing something. When we create a quote in zoho books we have a custom function that pushes the contact into a deal within the CRM. I can not for the life of me figure out how to push an estimate from

    • Next Page