Most websites act like goldfish. Every time you return, it’s like the first time. Shortest memory in the natural world (at least according to Ted Lasso).
But a good site feels familiar. Recognizable. Maybe even a little empathetic.
That doesn’t require a complex recommendation engine. It just means:
- Remembering a user’s name
- Showing the next logical step
- Adjusting copy or layout based on past choices
WordPress is more than capable of this kind of memory. Not right out of the box, to be sure, but the underlying capabilities are floating around in the mix, waiting for you (or some friend of yours) to retrieve them and put them to use. You’ve got users, metadata, cookies, sessions—everything you need.
So the next time someone visits your site, ask:
“Does this feel like we’ve met before?”
Logged In?
This should really be the case if they are a user who has logged. Because if they’ve logged in, you absolutely do know who they are. You may very well have asked them about their interests or preferences.
How? With a form, to be sure. I know WordPress form plugins kind of give the impression that no one could make a form on their own, but it’s entirely doable, especially if you keep it simple. Have a look at this video for a good rundown. That said, it’s probably best to stick with a form plugin for the reason that follows:
Just because you have a form doesn’t mean your system knows what to do with it, and this is where things get trickier. You can shortcut the complexity by using a form package that integrates with Advanced Custom Fields. With that integration, you can store data from your forms into custom meta fields you’ve created in your users’ profiles.
Using the Knowledge
We’re still not all the way home with this, because you’ve now got to consider how to use this information. If you want to use it to personalize the user’s experience of your website, honestly, this was something PeakZebra blocks were built to do without extra fuss.
But this blog isn’t really about selling you on PeakZebra (though we hope you’ll have a look). To personalize the site from this point forward, you’ll need to write some code. Probably the simplest way to get something done in this regard is to write some code that creates a shortcode to spit out either the value you’ve stored or variations of text based on the value you’ve stored.
Let ChatGPT Loose on It
This is actually the perfect sort of task to use AI for, because it’s a very self-contained task you’re giving it. It’s easy to test the resulting shortcode to see if it does what you want. It’s very unlikely that it will wind up creating any kind of unexpected side effects, because the shortcode mechanism is pretty well unconnected to the other workings of your site.
Why do you want this kind of site personalization? It’s the easiest, most effective way to show a site visitor that the information you’re presenting is relevant to them and their specific use case. You may have a page that has more or less exactly the same text, but tailoring the headline (“Hot tips for Newsletter Creators” versus “Hot tips for Podcasters”) makes it clear that this should resonate with people who are just like they are.
Want to see an example of this in action? Pop back out to the home page of this site and answer the questions about what kind of creator you are and what platform you use…