Personalization opportunities from Vercel's website
Vercel is a cloud platform that offers efficient workflows for developing, deploying, and hosting websites and web applications. We analyzed their website, looking for missed personalization opportunities they could use to engage different personas. The goal was to find out how to optimize the messaging by using dynamic content on the site’s copies, images, and layouts.
Keep reading to learn the insights from Vercel's homepage.
Vercel’s website personalization opportunities
To build a new communication strategy, we first need to define personas, create initial assumptions, and then test these assumptions on parts of the website that lack targeted copies, images, and visual elements.
Defining personas
As a platform as a service (PaaS), Vercel's ideal personas are developers, tech leads, and startups.
What we know about them:
• They are data-driven and proficient in frameworks and programming languages.
• They vary between junior and senior levels of expertise.
• They are motivated by solving challenging problems. They also like to help others grow through forums, online communities, and conferences.
• They are early adopters and enthusiasts who like to test new tools and services.
Initial assumptions
What would you assume to be effective when developing a landing page to draw attention from these personas?
First, you can assume that long copies won't engage with this audience. They don't want to know the theory; they want to solve problems. Can you help them solve challenging situations quickly with your product or service? Focus your communication on it, then.
Second, they love step-by-step guides that let them solve problems independently. Develop a good documentation section to help them implement your service without asking for help — they will love you forever!
Finally, creating a practical pricing session where they can self-serve and choose the appropriate tools will help them make decisions faster.
Some opportunities
Now that we know which way to go, it's time to look at Vercel's website and find what can be improved with personalization. We've found room for improvement in the home banner, CTA buttons, and certain copies within other website sections. Let's take a look at them individually.
Home banner
Vercel’s personas engage with short sentences.
They currently use this strategy, but it could still be crafted to make each of them feel related to what they read.
CTA Buttons
Using complicated messaging for CTA buttons is ineffective, especially for tech crowds. Vercel plays a lot with the verb “deploy” because it is their core:
But they could also change this CTA to understand which copy drives more users to the sign-up page. They could play with different actions based on the audience:
While all devs are usually inclined to click in CTAs that provide hands-on next steps, enterprise companies often have more availability to participate in sales calls. It's something to consider when personalizing for a specific audience.
Copies
While enterprise-level devs would look for more sophisticated and reliable software, startups may want something quick to implement and easy to operate.
Copies that direct startup devs to docs, self-serving pages that offer a quick overview of pricing and add-ons, and a quick explanation of what the platform does are the best ways to engage this audience.
Still, some parts of their home page are directed to enterprise accounts:
If those copies were dynamic, it would be easy to tailor them to fit startup devs and reduce friction when these personas browse through their home page.
Wrapping up
Vercel's website is simple and intuitive, but its personas demand a direct approach and concise information. And if segmenting users on marketing campaigns makes sense, why not do the same with the website? Our extra tip is always to AB test your options to find the best positioning for each user.
Do you want to experiment with personalization as well? Here is a complete guide to building the best version of your website.