Dynamic Content Definition, Types, and Benefits, Why You Should Care
Imagine your business is offering a unique shipping discount as part of your Christmas sale strategy. Depending on their own location, your website visitors might see three different Greeting Bar campaigns, offering a discount in USD, EUR, and JPY.
That’s just one example of an effective dynamic content marketing strategy. Other examples include product recommendations based on products a user showed interest in beforehand. Maybe you went online to check out a gaming mouse and what do you know, a carousel campaign pops up! It lists images of the gaming accessories you clicked on previously.
The ultimate purpose of dynamic content is to provide a more user-friendly experience and encourage conversions and return visits.
In the text below, you will get a chance to learn more about the definition of dynamic content, and how it can benefit your website.
Hop on!
What Is Dynamic Content?
Dynamic content, or adaptive content, adapts to every individual user’s needs as they are interacting with it. User data such as geolocation, sex, gender, and age, as well as user behavior such as clicking, hovering, and scrolling can all impact dynamic content.
Any kind of content can be dynamic: text, video, or even audio format. You can find dynamic content on websites, especially eCommerce websites, as well as in email marketing. The most famous example of dynamic content in email is addressing the email recipient by name.
There is obviously no need to memorize every individual client’s name to make this happen: it’s done for you, automatically. Everything from collecting user data to placing it in the email/website to mimic familiarity is done by code. Instead of a lived experience and memorization of “Michael,“ for example, the code sees a {$name} tag in your email subject line or copy.
Dynamic Content vs. Static Content
The main difference is the way websites display content. In a static website, content does not change based on user data or user behavior: it remains the same for everyone. In a dynamic website, the website pulls content in the spur-of-the-moment, changing it with the user.
Way back in the olden days of 14 years ago, nearly every web page showed the same content to every website visitor. Gradually, programming languages such as Python, Java, and PHP started powering website databases and changing the world wide web forever.
Static, HTML pages that would remain the same regardless of user data gave way to user-relevant, dynamic web content.
Today, you’ll most likely run into websites with pieces that are static, and other pieces that are dynamic. Termed hybrids, these websites show some information to every user, such as the Äbout Us” page, the business motto, and core values. Other information, such as product recommendations, is dynamic and varies depending on the user’s behavior and unique characteristics.
It’s usually a good idea to try and find the right balance between static and dynamic pieces of content on your website.
What Dynamic Content Looks Like to Users
If a middle-aged woman decided to visit an apparel website, we’d know what to expect.
She’d probably click Women (not men) and Adults (not teenagers or children). As she’s scrolling past car coats, raincoats, and rain boots, a carousel popup would appear.
On it, she would see images pulled from “clothes for adult women” categories and subcategories. And that’s it, right? Sometimes. Since every person is an individual, the woman might want to check the men’s section and click oversized clothes and hoodies. She might also want to go through some rainbow-colored gloves from the teenage section.
A dynamic carousel popup would catch all that, and run her personal picks for her, savoring every second she spends on the website.