Personalize a digital experience with audiences

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Note

Audiences are supported on traditional (in-process) sites, where the CMS manages both content authoring and frontend rendering. They are not supported on headless sites, where the frontend is a fully independent application that consumes content through APIs. If your implementation uses a headless architecture, audience-based personalization is not available through this mechanism.

One way to personalize a digital experience in Optimizely is to create an audience (formerly called a visitor group) with criteria for that group. For example, you can design a product banner specifically for first-time visitors or for visitors from a geographic region or market, and so on.

You can create an audience based on many types of criteria, such as the number of visits to a specific page, and so on. Several criteria are included by default in Optimizely CMS. Developers can also create their criteria through code, see Create audience criteria.

If you have multiple audiences, a visitor may match more than one audience. You then can use recommendation groups to group content to avoid displaying the same content twice and display fallback content to visitors who match no audiences.

Select View as Audience to see the content according to the audience criteria. It displays the personalized content as the visitor will see it.

Create audience views example

You want to show a "Welcome back!" banner to returning visitors and a "New here? Get started" banner to first-time visitors on the same page. Visitors who match neither audience see a default banner.

The following example shows different content to two different audiences on the same page. Because personalization in CMS 13 applies at the block level—not at the individual text field level—the workflow involves creating separate blocks for each audience variant, adding both to a content area, and then assigning an audience to each.

Prerequisites

• You have administration or editor access to CMS 13.
• You have the VisitorGroupAdmins role (required to access the Audiences tab and apply personalization).
• Your page has a content area that supports blocks.

Step 1 – Create your audiences

For complete information, see Manage audiences and Create audience criteria.

1. In the CMS editor, select the Audiences tab.

2. Select Create Audience and enter the name Returning Visitors.

   
   • Select Add Criteria, then select Number of Visits > More than > 1.
   • Select Create Audience to save. (It is Save Audience if you are editing an audience.)

3. Repeat to create a second audience, New Visitors and criteria Number of Visits > Equal > 1.

   

Step 2 – Create the blocks

You need three blocks in total: one for each audience variant (New Visitor and Returning Visitor), and one default fallback.

1. In the assets panel, select the Shared Blocks tab.

2. Select Create New Block and choose your block type (for example, a Teaser Block). Create the default block first, which will display to all audiences.

   
   • Name – Banner – Default.
   • Heading – Expore our latest updates.
   • Body – Open the door to ... meaningful value.
   • Image – Select an image from your media assets.

3. Click Create to create the block.

4. Click Publish to publish the block.

5. Repeat these steps for the Banner - New Visitor block. This is intended to display only when the New Visitor audience criteria is met.

   • Name – Banner – New Visitor.
   • Heading – New here? Get started.
   • Body – Discover everything you can do with our platform.
   • Image – Select an image from your media assets.

6. Repeat these steps for the Banner - Returning Visitor block. This is intended to display only when the Returning Visitor audience criteria is met.

   • Name – Banner – Returning Visitor.
   • Heading – Welcome back!
   • Body – Great to see you again. Here's what's new.
   • Image – Select an image from your media assets.

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Note

Save blocks under For All Applications or For This Block if you want to reuse them elsewhere. If saved under For This Page, the block is only available on the current page. If you created the blocks in the wrong folder, you can drag them to another folder.

Step 3 – Add all three blocks to the content area

1. Open the page you want to personalize in the CMS editor.
2. Select All Properties view.

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   Note

   Personalized blocks do not display in the standard edit view. Use the View as Audience option in the top toolbar to preview how each audience sees the page.

3. Locate the content area where the banner should appear.
4. In the assets panel, find Banner – Default, Banner – New Visitor, and Banner – Returning Visitor, and drag them into the content area. All three blocks now appear in the content area in the All Properties view.

Step 4 – Apply audience personalization to each block

1. In the content area, select a shared block (such as Banner - New Visitor) and click the Audiences icon.

   

2. In the Personalization Content window, type the beginning of the audience you want in the Select Audiences field, and select your audience (such as New visitors). You can select more than one audience..

   

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   Note

   Leave Banner – Default with no audience applied — this makes it the fallback for all other visitors.

3. Click Save.

4. Repeat for the other block (Banner - Returning Visitor).

   

Step 5 – Preview as each audience

In Visual Builder, select the View as Audience dropdown.

Select Everyone to see the default.

Select New Visitors to see the new visitor view. Note that the default shows below it (in the order it was place on the page).

Select Returning Visitors to see the returning visitor view. Note that the default shows below it (in the order it was place on the page).

When you are satisfied with the personalization preview, select Publish to make the changes live.

Key points to remember

• Personalization is block-level, not field-level – Individual text properties on a page cannot be personalized directly — use blocks within a content area instead.
• Block order matters – CMS evaluates blocks top to bottom. Place audience-specific blocks above the default fallback block.
• One audience per block – Each block in a content area can be assigned to one audience only.
• Shared blocks update everywhere – If you edit a shared block, the change reflects on every page where that block is used. Create page-specific blocks if you need isolated content.

Search engine index and audiences

Search engines crawl your website to index your content. The search engine crawler assesses the audience. If you have an audience Visitors from the UK , the crawler indexes the content personalized for the UK if the crawler has an IP identified as being in the United Kingdom. Otherwise, that content is not indexed.

Another example is where you apply a date/time audience criterion. If you have a weekend-only audience, the crawler indexes content if it visits at the weekend; otherwise, it does not.

Use Everyone content in a group if something must be shown (or crawled) in an area of the page.

Provide access to content using audiences

Administrators can also grant access to specific content using audiences. For example, the administrator can make a page or a block accessible only to audiences from the UK. See Access rights.