Recommending pages to personas

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Kentico EMS required

Features described on this page require the Kentico EMS license.

You can recommend different pages on a page based on current visitor’s persona. For example, you can display different articles to a visitor assigned to a persona named Patient and different articles to a visitor assigned to a persona named Foreigner.

To recommend content to personas

  1. Assign personas to pages
  2. Place a widget recommending the content
    —or—
  3. Place a web part recommending the content
  4. Previewing content for different personas

Assigning personas to pages

By assigning personas to pages, you establish which pages you want the personas to see. You can either:

  1. Add personas to a single page
  2. Assign personas to multiple pages

To add personas to a single page

Consider adding different personas to the same page. The page’s content may be appropriate for more than one persona.

  1. Navigate to the page that you want to assign personas to.
  2. Switch to the Properties -> Personas tab.
  3. Click on Add personas. A Select personas dialog opens.
  4. Select the personas that you want to assign to the page.
  5. Click on OK. The system assigns the personas to the page.

You have defined which pages are appropriate for which personas. You can now use a widget or a web part to display personalized content on the page.

To assign personas to multiple pages

Consider adding different personas to the same pages. The pages’ content may be appropriate for more than one persona.

  1. In the Pages application, switch to Listing.
  2. Filter the pages that you want to see.
  3. Select the pages that you want to assign personas to.
  4. In the first drop-down list under the listed pages, choose whether you want to perform the action on Selected pages or All pages.
  5. In the second drop-down list, choose Tag pages with personas. A Select personas dialog opens.
  6. Select the personas that you want to assign to the pages.
  7. Confirm by clicking on OK. The system assigns the personas to the pages.

You have defined which pages are appropriate for which personas. You can now use a widget or a web part to display personalized content on the page.

Placing a widget to recommend content to personas

  1. Navigate to the page on which you want to recommend content.
  2. On the page, open a widget zone’s menu (). A Select widget dialog appears.
  3. In the Online Marketing folder, select Persona-based Recommendations.
  4. Click on OK. A Widget properties dialog opens.
  5. Specify the widget properties. Hover over the properties to see their description.
    1. By default, transformations for displaying news articles and e-commerce products are available. Developers can create new transformations in the Personas.Transformation page type.
  6. Confirm by clicking on OK.

Now, when a visitor assigned to a persona visits the page, the widget displays the pages for the particular persona.

Placing a web part to recommend content to personas

  1. Navigate to the page on which you want to recommend content.
  2. Place the Persona-based Recommendations web part on the page. A web part properties dialog appears.
  3. Select the Path to the pages that the web part displays.
  4. (Optional) Select the Page types that the web part displays. Not selecting any Page types makes the web part display pages from any Page types.
  5. (Optional) Specify the Select top N pages field.
  6. Select a transformation for displaying the content. There are two example transformations available in Personas - Transformations.
    1. By default, transformations for displaying news articles and e-commerce products are available. You can create new transformations in the Personas.Transformation page type.
  7. (Optional) To increase performance, specify the Columns that are loaded for the displayed pages. Use only the columns that you load in your transformations.
  8. (Optional) Configure how the web part chooses the pages it displays.
  9. Specify the rest of the web part properties.
  10. Confirm by clicking on OK.

Now, when a visitor assigned to a persona visits the page, the web part displays the pages for the particular persona.

Configure how the Persona-based recommendations widget and web part display content

By default, if there isn’t enough tagged pages to display for the persona viewing the page, the web part displays other pages of the specified Page types. You can change the behavior so that only the tagged pages for the specific persona are displayed.

To change which pages the web part displays:

  1. In the web part properties, remove the macro in the ORDER BY expression.
    1. The expression sorts pages so that tagged pages are displayed first. Untagged pages are displayed only if there isn’t enough tagged pages to display.
  2. Into the WHERE condition field, enter the following macro: {% PersonaDocumentWhereCondition %}
    1. The where condition ensures that only tagged pages are displayed. Note that the WHERE condition also loads pages faster than the default OrderBy macro.
  3. Confirm by OK.

You have changed the behaviour of the widget/web part so that it only displays pages tagged by the visitor’s persona.

Loading and displaying data

You can also refer to Loading and displaying data on websites for more general information on using repeaters in the system.

Previewing content for different personas

Once you set up pages to display pages to personas, you can preview how each of the personas sees the content.

To preview content for different personas

  1. Switch to the Preview tab of the page for which you created personalization variants.
  2. Use the Personas drop-down list to choose the persona for which you want to preview the page.
  3. Repeat the process for other personas.