Changing website content based on a visitor's geo location (country, state or city) is known as geo targeting and the primary purpose of doing this is to show content that is relevant to visitor's location.
Lets take an example:
Let’s assume that you’re a electronics retailer who generates a good bulk of their revenue through their eCommerce store. Assuming you’re serving clients from across the world (not just in the US!), what do you think would be the most effective strategy?
A) Having a single, static website that serves the same content to all your users, or
B) Having a dynamic website that displays different prices, currencies, and shipping policies based on where your users are located?
If you answered B, then congrats - you’re on the right track!
Why change website content based on visitor location?
Showing location relevant content to a visitor has multiple advantages:
- Location relevant content increases trust as a visitor knows your business is located near them or delivers to their area
- Location relevant content can catch a visitor's attention quickly. This reduces the chance of a visitor leaving your site and in turn increases conversions
- In some cases, legally it may be required to show content based on a visitors country or state
How to change website content based on visitor location?
There are two ways to approach location relevant content targeting and it depends on the amount of content that needs to change.
Small amount of content
When you only require a small amount of content to change, for example a phone number, address or some text, you can get away with dynamically changing content in the same page using our Geo Content service.
Large amounts of content
When you have a large amount of content that needs to change, for example displaying different products, currencies, full page text, navigation, etc a better approach is to use unique location specific pages or even separate websites targeted to each location. You can then make use of our Geo Redirect service to route traffic to the correct page or website based on their location.
Geo Content
Geo Content lets you dynamically modify a piece of content in a page based on a visitor's location.
Advantages
- easy to manage when only a small amount of content needs to be changed
- less work required duplicate pages are not required
Disadvantages
- needs some amount of html and css coding knowledge
- may be hard to implement if your CMS platform doesn't allow you to modify html
- not SEO friendly as crawlers may not detect dynamic content
- may not support complex content that is generated dynamically e.g. product grids
Quick start guides
Geo Redirect
Geo Redirect lets you route visitors to a location relevant page or website based on their location. We strongly recommend going down the route of having location specific pages or websites and routing traffic to the correct page/site based on visitor location. This is a better long term approach of managing multi-location sites in terms of trust and SEO.
Advantages
- no coding required
- having location specific pages or websites is the ideal strategy for SEO
- easy to manage content in each page or site
- works with all websites / CMS
Disadvantages
- need to maintain multiple pages or websites
Quick start guides
E-commerce location based content targeting
If you are running a ecommerce store and need to show products, prices and content based on a visitor's country, then the best approach is to create separate stores and route traffic to the correct store based on their location.
Check out our guide For Multi-Country E-commerce Stores
Use Cases
1. Streamline information
Many eCommerce store owners will make the mistake of trying to build a single site that addresses the concerns of all their different target segments. Unfortunately, these folks often end up with a website that has too much going on at once.
We’re talking multiple messages, offers and Calls-To-Actions (CTA), which leads to a cognitive overload on your visitor’s part. What does your visitor end up doing? They close the browser, and churn forever.
The bottom line? Your website has to contain just the right amount of information - enough so that your visitor can confidently make a purchase, but not so much to the point where it gets overwhelming or confusing. That’s why it’s important to add geo content, which changes based on visitor location, to cater to individual users!
2. Make checkout easier
On top of that, you’ll also want to display prices in your visitor’s home currency, and offer their preferred payment options during checkout. This way, you minimize the friction associated with buying a product, and increase the chances of your visitor going ahead and completing their purchase.
3. Show targeted offers
Most eCommerce stores run regular promotions and offers which coincide with holidays and festivals. But here’s the thing: if you’re serving a customer who’s in New Zealand or Australia, then running a Fourth Of July sale doesn’t really make much sense. In order to localize your offers and promotions, you’ll have to customize content based on visitor geolocation.
Some eCommerce store owners might argue that a sale is a sale, and at the end of the day, no one’s going to say no to a discount. This might be true, but you should also consider the other implications that your promotional strategy brings about.
Say you’re an Australian who’s looking at this store which obviously caters to a US audience, for example. If the prices are really that competitive, then sure - you might go ahead and purchase a hard drive or two from them. But when it comes to buying laptops for your entire team, you’d probably give this site a miss, and look for another retailer instead. After all, you’re not sure whether this company would be able to provide you with the necessary customer support, given that they’re based somewhere else.
That’s all there is to it! You’ve now successfully set up your dynamic content, and your website will now display content based on visitor IP address. All there’s left to do is sit back and wait for your conversion rates to soar through the roof.
Geo Targetly
Geo Targetly is a simple, plug-and-play tool that lets you redirect visitors and change website content based on visitor location. To start serving your visitors geo content based on their IP address, claim your free trial now!
