Tips & Tricks: Explore Audience Data & Optimize Experiences by Device Type

Date Sent: March 9th, 2021

Hi there,

The Dynamic Yield platform enables you to serve personalized content to site visitors regardless of the type of device they use to access your site. Whether they navigate to your site via-a desktop, mobile, or tablet web browser, users will be served with the Experiences that they qualify for (per any relevant targeting conditions). But personalized content that looks and behaves optimally for a given device interface may be more effective at generating ideal user engagement. For some campaigns, targeting Experiences and tailoring Variation design to the device category could potentially drive more users to convert, especially for desktop vs. mobile users.

Leverage our ideas and best practices for targeting and tailoring Experiences based on device category. Use our tips for evaluating data in the Audience Explorer and using the Audience Breakdown of Experience Reports to better understand the potential value of incorporating device category targeting and Variation design for relevant campaigns. 

Explore User Segments

Could your team benefit from targeting and tailoring Experiences of certain campaigns by device type? Depending on your team's personalization plan and approach to Audience-based targeting, the value-add of targeting by device category may vary. To understand if this approach could be worthwhile for your team, start by using the Audience Explorer to understand the scope and scale of the user segments for each device type. Then, take a look at a few Experience Reports and break down the data by device category Audiences. Analyze the report to see if the data supports the approach of creating and tailoring a new Experience to a certain device type.

First, navigate to the Audience Explorer page and look at the Device Type data for All Users from the last 30 days: 

Note: the vast majority of your users are likely on a desktop or mobile device. Typically, only a small percentage of users will be accessing your site from a tablet, and as such, this article will primarily focus on the comparison of desktop vs. mobile device data.

Next, compare the data for Desktop and Mobile users by clicking the Select condition  dropdown and choosing Device category and Desktop. Then, click the Select Audience dropdown and select the Audience for Mobile Users:

Evaluate the data in terms of key metrics such as Conversion Rate, Revenue, and Pageviews. Referencing the data above, we can see that the vast majority of users are on a Mobile device (orange text). However, Mobile users convert at a significantly lower rate than Desktop users and have fewer Pageviews. This could be an indicator that, for certain campaigns, tailoring and targeting some Experiences for Mobile users may be beneficial. 

Evaluate Report Data & Variation Design

Take a look at a few Experience Reports of campaigns that are live on your site and use the Audience Breakdown feature to see the results for each device category Audience. Evaluate the results and see if you can identify similar trends in those Experience Reports as you saw in the data from your Audience Explorer comparison: 

Looking at the Experience Report example above, while Variation 1 is leading to great results and positive uplift for Desktop users, for Mobile users, Variation 1 is generating some pretty significant downlift. Before pivoting to an entirely new Experience targeted to Mobile users and optimized for mobile devices, consider first just evaluating the content design for areas of improvement. 

For example, take a look at these screenshots of the desktop vs. mobile preview of the same Experience from a Dynamic Content campaign on a retail site:

While there isn't anything technically problematic with the mobile layout, the messaging could be cleaned up. Simply optimize the content of this Experience to the mobile interface by duplicating the original Experience, adjusting the Variation design, and targeting the new Experience to mobile users:

As shown in the screenshot above, by simply removing a few lines of text, adjusting the text alignment, and modifying the font style, this Variation now looks far more suitable and optimal to serve in the mobile browser interface. The Experience that houses this mobile-optimized Variation should be targeted to users on mobile devices. There is no need to adjust the targeting conditions for the original Experience. Leaving the targeting conditions for the original Experience as-is will result in all non-mobile users receiving that original Experience (assuming that there are no other targeting conditions applied).

Best Practices

• When considering the potential value-add of targeting and optimizing Experiences to certain device types, use the Audience Explorer to compare user data on device types to establish a benchmark for your overall Experience analysis.
• Use the Audience Breakdown feature in a few relevant Experience Reports to see if the results for each device category Audience reflect what you saw in the comparison data in the Audience Explorer.
• If the data on metrics like conversion rate, CTR, pageviews, purchases, revenue, etc., appear to trend more negatively for users of a certain device type compared to another, it could indicate that targeting and tailoring an Experience for users of that device type may be beneficial.
• When creating and optimizing an Experience for users on a certain device type per-the results of an existing Experience, you may only need to tweak or change a few Variation design elements within that new Experience so that it's better-suited for that device interface.

Until next time,
Ashley

Ashley Berman
Sr. Customer Education Manager