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

    • More context, fewer tabs: View lookup modules' data within a CRM Canvas page

      Hello everyone, How often do your users juggle multiple browser tabs just to piece together the full context of a record? This update can make their lives easier. You can now add lookup modules' fields to a Canvas detail view page and a Canvas list view

    • On click of the Blueprint transition (Qualified or Not Qualified), the 'Convert' option should be enabled in the Lead module.

      On click of the Blueprint transition (Qualified or Not Qualified), the 'Convert' option should be enabled in the Lead module. console.clear(); let convertButton = ZDK.Page.getButton('convert'); let leadStatus = ZDK.Page.getField('Lead_Stage').getValue();

    • Show all items making up the composite item in transactions

      Dear Zoho, Currently, when we select a composite item in Zoho Inventory for a transaction, we do not receive a breakdown of the individual items that make up the composite. This makes it challenging for our team to accurately pick, pack, and ship the

    • Custom Roles & Granular Permission Control in Zoho SalesIQ

      Hello Zoho SalesIQ Team, We appreciate the functionalities offered by Zoho SalesIQ, but we would like to request a crucial enhancement regarding user roles and permissions. Current Issue: At present, Zoho SalesIQ provides fixed roles—Admin, Supervisor,

    • Condition to skip recipient signature

      Is there a way, alone or with a Zoho Form integration, to skip a recipient signature when a condition is set? This happens because in this template, not always all the recipients need to sign it. Sometimes its just a few. We are using a Zoho Form integration

    • How to filter emails by Reply-to field?

      I receive a very particular newsletter from an association A registered on a website W (that is used by many associations), and the emails fields are not great: the From just contains the generic website's W's email, while A is only mentioned in the Reply-to

    • Wich version of Backstage is included in Zoho One

      Hello I am in the event business and i am considering Zoho One to replace my current tools. I will need Backstage to manage my events but I am wondering wich version of backstage will I get if I subscribe to Zoho One. Thank you Guillaume

    • How to restore deleted campaigns?

      I accidentally deleted my first campaign that went out today (08/21/18). How do I restore it?

    • Organize and Clone Task Custom Views

      We have rolled out two new enhancements to task custom views: Custom View Groups and Custom View Clone. Custom View Groups Similar to predefined view groups, we have introduced groups for custom views to help organize and categorize them. My Custom Views:

    • Kits: Option to Hide Associate Items on Documents

      The new Kit type of Composite Item is very helpful, and we're already using it in several different ways. One problem is that there seems to be no way to hide the components on some documents, including Package Slips. There is an option given in settings

    • Zoho Books CREDIT LIMIT is completely USELESS due to a BUG!!! Please fix it ASAP!!

      Credit Limit should not be taken into account if payment terms on the Invoice are without credit. If selected Credit 0 days (Prepayment) why in this world would a notification pop up saying credit limit is exceeded and not allowing to create an invoice?

    • Is it possible to adjust the web browser tab title (when a ZoHo Desk ticket is opened)

      Hi All, When I open a ZoHo Desk ticket in a web browser, the tab title (text that appears at the top of the browser tab) uses the logic: *company icon picture* (xxxx) #ticket number - company name See below (highlighted in red) for reference. Company

    • Configure ChatGPT in Zoho Cliq | Now with GPT-4!

      Updated for GPT-4 Support: The post and scripts has been revised to take advantage of the new GPT-4 model's capabilities. Please use the updated version for enhanced performance and accuracy. If you have been on the internet for the past few months, you

    • Have completed Zoho Sign documents attach automatically to contact and/or account

      Hello, Just used ZohoSign for the first time to get an e-signature on an important document. Setting up the template was nice and easy and configuring the request to go to the right people and training a member of staff was also very easy. HOWEVER Why

    • Using email "importance" as workflow-criteria

      I'd like to set up a workflow that triggers if an incoming email has been flagged as "high importance" but I'm not seeing any way to do that. Hopefully I'm just missing something obvious...?

    • Update Lead Status in Zoho CRM When a Meeting is Booked via Microsoft Bookings

      Hi everyone, I’m trying to streamline our lead management process and would like to automatically update the Lead Status in Zoho CRM whenever a meeting is booked through Microsoft Bookings. Has anyone successfully implemented this kind of integration

    • Kaizen #199: FAQs on Multi-Select Lookup (MxN) Field in Zoho CRM

      Nearing 200th Kaizen Post – We want to hear from you! Do you have any questions, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover in future posts? Your insights and suggestions help us shape future content and make this series better for everyone. Got

    • Zoho Desk Android app update: Enhanced UI of the History tab.

      Hello everyone! In the latest Android version(v2.9.10) of the Zoho Desk mobile app, we enhanced the UI of the 'History' tab within a ticket. Also, we have introduced a filter option to easily search the history based on the actions performed on the ticket.

    • Is Zoho Marketing Plus part of Zoho One?

      Hi, Is the new fancy Zoho Marketing Plus part of the Zoho One package? Is there any benefit in using this rather than the standalone products? Many thanks Jon

    • Is it possible to Bulk Update 'Product Name' in Zoho Desk?

      Is it possible to Bulk Update 'Product Name' in Zoho Desk? I cannot see that option now. Kindly help how we can do it.

    • Change visable Subform fields

      I have a form with 4 subforms in it. I added another field to each of the subforms in my main form. Now, how do I update the subforms to show the new fields that I added?

    • Integrate Bunq with ZOHO Bookes

      We are new users of ZOHO Books, and our bank (BUNQ, in the Netherlands) isn't listed on the bank integrations. Is there a way to handle this?

    • Trial Extenstion/ 2nd Go!

      Hi, Recently trialed FSM bit didnt get a chance to try out the most recent features is it possible to get another trial to try the new features and see if I can make it work for me?

    • Weekly Tips : Take Control of Your Sent Emails using Outbox Delay

      Ever clicked “Send” on an email, then instantly realized you forgot something—like a file, an attachment, or even made a small typo? It happens more often than you'd think. Wouldn’t it be helpful if your email waited a little before actually going out?

    • Format of data after export to spreadsheet

      Dear Zoho, can you explain to me what is the point of a report exporting to XLSX if the format of the amounts that will be created there is in text format and not suitable for anything? Why do I need data in a sheet with which nothing more can be do

    • Mapping a custom preferred date field in the estimate with the native field in the workorder

      Hi Zoho, I created a field in the estimate : "Preferred Date 1", to give the ability to my support agent to add a preferred date while viewing the client's estimate. However, in the conversion mapping (Estimate to Workorder), I'm unable to map my custom

    • Customer Payment

      Seprate voucher required for cash and bank .You can not authorized any one to enter cash payment .In statement clearly shown is it bank receipt or cash recipt .

    • how to add previous month purchase bill and claim ITC

      Hello we have a unclaimed ITC bill of April (we didn't claim it in may as seller didn't uploaded his gstr1 ) when we trying to file gstr 3b in june month we noticed the bill has been uploaded (april bill) .how to change the filing month of that april

    • Deluge security enhancements

      Hello everyone, At Deluge, security is a top priority, and we're continuously working to enhance the platform's safety and reliability. As part of our ongoing commitment to secure coding and industry best practices, we're rolling out key updates to how

    • How do I set users up to only send emails using org emails?

      We run marketing campaigns for multiple clients and strictly send emails using the official organization addresses provided by each client. However, we've encountered several instances where users unintentionally send emails from their own company accounts—a

    • open multiple notes at a time.

      Hey there, New to Notebook and liking it, but one thing that's really a bother is not being able to open more than one note at a time, either in a new window or in a new tab. Often times, I like to copy/paste from one note to another or compare drafts

    • Let’s Talk Recruit: Forms that think before you do!

      Welcome back to our Let's Talk Recruit series. In our previous post, we shared highlights from our community meetups held across India. This time, we’re talking about something that often gets overlooked but makes a huge difference once you set it up

    • PEPPOL Support Needed for Zoho Books in Europe

      I'm reaching out to discuss the urgent need for PEPPOL support in Zoho Books for European users. With Belgium mandating B2B e-invoicing via PEPPOL starting in 2026, many of us are struggling to manage invoices without this integration. While Zoho Books

    • Allow Equity Accounts to be Used for Expenses

      Currently, when entering an Expense or Bill, the Expense Account (account to be debited) allows for accounts in any of these categories to be chosen: COGS Expense Other Current Liability Fixed Asset Other Current Asset Noticeably missing are Equity Accounts.

    • メール一括配信の未送信のメールについて知りたい

      メール一括配信の後の、未送信のメールの数は添付のようにシステムから連絡がくるのですが それらの対象者を知りたい。レポートなど一覧で知りたい。 また配信対象者なのに（担当者、リード）の メールの履歴に配信したメールの件名でさえ表示されないのはどう理解したらよいのか知りたいです。 また、これらの人をレポートで一覧で出す方法を教えてください。把握したいためです。

    • How do I add the time zone for the each recipient/subscriber

      Hi, I've read that Zoho allows for emails to be sent at a certain time based on the recipient's time zone. How do I add the time zone for the each recipient/subscriber? Thanks!

    • Zoho Formsから獲得した見込み客をSaleIQでトラッキングし、そのトラッキング情報をCRMに集約することは可能でしょうか？

      Zoho formsを活用しています。 Zoho CRM、Zoho SalesIQと連携するよう設定しており、Zoho formsから獲得した見込み客の情報はCRMに連携されるのですが、トラッキング情報はZoho CRMの見込み客データ内の 関連リスト 訪問-Zoho salesIQ にデータが反映されません。※添付画像参照ください 考えられる原因や対策などありましたら教えていただけないでしょうか。 よろしくお願い致します。

    • Find and Merge Duplicates to trigger webhook

      My sales team uses the Find and Merge Duplicates feature often to cleanup records in the CRM. We use webhooks to signal to our internal tools database when new Contacts are created, updated, or deleted, in order to keep our DB in sync with Zoho CRM. However,

    • Marketer’s Space: Using Zoho CRM Data for Dynamic Content and Personalization in Zoho Campaigns

      Hello Marketers! Welcome back to Marketer’s Space. Do you want to send emails or SMS that feel less like mass messages and more like one-on-one conversations? By integrating Zoho CRM with Zoho Campaigns, you can pull in rich customer data and use it to

    • Add Attendees to Session months before the Event

      I need to manually add Attendees to Sessions right away for an event that's taking place in 6 months so that the Speaker can communicate with them in advance of the event. How can this be done?

    • Next Page