school size: 750 students
Geo redirect: sending visitors from different locations to one URL and redirecting them based on their location can have a tremendous positive impact on site performance. In previous case studies, we’ve seen geo redirect and personalization show increases in time-on-site, pages-per-session and conversion rates. Using geolocation to segment visitors doesn't cost advertising dollars and converts your existing website traffic. Let's dive in!
Taking a step back to understand what exactly is happening with URL redirects, here's a simple explanation about what exactly is a URL redirect is. For the non-technical, it can feel like a magic trick: you enter one URL, and you’re taken to another. The most common use for URL redirect is when a website is making a change to a new content management system or overhauling their design. There are countless redirect tool available. Simply add the previous URL “/articles” and redirect to the new URL “/blog” means that anytime someone visits example.com/articles, they’ll be redirected to example.com/blog.[caption id="attachment_8657" align="aligncenter" width="258"] photo cred: moz.com[/caption]Whatever the reason for your redirect, the one we’re focusing on specifically today is redirection based on website visitor location: geo redirect. This falls nicely in the geotargeting software category. The website homepage has evolved rapidly in the last three years. One of the biggest trends we’re noticing is the use of segmenting and personalization to provide a better overall website experience. The more pages a user has to navigate to: the higher the bounce rate and the lower the conversion rates. Getting visitors from anywhere in the world to the content most relevant to them is the goal.
When you introduce a geo redirect, you’re instantly surfacing or displaying more personalized content. Using IP address combined with latitude and longitude, potential customers are dropped on the website version most closely associated with their region of interest!Here's an example of a geo-redirect in action. No sound in the video, but you'll see that using a geo forwarding, we easily removed a cumbersome step in the visitor user-experience.
Here are a couple times when using a geo redirect would improve the website experience.
Share a single URL on Facebook: domestic users land on domestic site, international visitors land on international site. Example: visit barnabyuniversity.org from California and land on the homepage. Visit barnabyuniversity.org from Japan, land on the international students page, or a separate barnabyuniversity.international.org site.
Easily divert website visitors from a specific city, state, country or region to a separate page on your website or a different website entirely. A potential customer visiting your event website: events.com: someone from Texas is redirected to events.com/texas and someone from Chicago is redirected to events.com/chicago.
We’ve worked with products and services from franchises to warehouses that have different websites variations.
If you have multiple websites in different languages: geo-redirection makes it simple to get Whether you’re a website with multiple variations of your site that you want users to get to faster or you have
Perhaps you have a different website for each country that you communicate or do business with. Geo Redirects are the perfect way to personalize content.
In a lot of ways, redirecting website traffic based on their location or IP address is like segmenting an email newsletter list. Marketers since the dawn of email marketing have been meticulously and painstakingly grouping and tagging email list subscribers based on information collected from form fields and other marketing traction channels. Marketers know one of the golden rules of marketing is you don’t want to try and be everything to everyone. It’s why you don’t send an email to your entire list: you segment. The same is true of website visitors. The homepage is no longer the most visited page on a site, because users enter your site from hundreds of sources at varying stages of their buying journey. You can also do both! Sending an email to newsletter subscribers can be tricky if you don’t have customer data. Some email marketing platforms guess the newsletter subscriber location.
At GeoFli, we like to measure everything. When you setup a URL redirect, your analytics will look the same. Using the example above, your traffic will report to example.com/blog. You can use retargeting audiences the same way you normally would. This is especially important if you have a good amount of inbound links. Set up conversion goals to track progress toward your website goal. Here are a couple articles on the search engine optimization (SEO) impacts of URL redirects:Redirection Best Practices: SEO
Now that you understand the "why" behind geo URL forwarding, it's time to explore the how. When GeoFli launched in 2016, we made it simple for folks to change and replace content on their existing website based on location: someone visiting a site from NY would see different content than someone visiting from CA. Think: a university would show a different header images to in-state students than out-of-state students. As our team and software evolved (and got way better), we added the ability to enter a URL, highlight a region, and direct traffic from that region to a completely different URL! If it sounds simple, it’s because it is. We work with online retail companies, universities, economic development firms and many other verticals to improve the website experience, redirect visitors and take users from the awareness phase into the consideration phase. It's what we do best. Step One: Enter Your Starting Website URL. In this example. We'll use "events.com"Step Two: Select the geolocation you're hoping to target. In this example, we'll use Texas.Step Three: Using GeoFli, add the URL you want visitors from Texas to see, when they visit "events.com".Step Four: Add the GeoFli pixel on events.com and you're now personalizing and segmenting your website visitors from Texas! The entire process takes ten minutes start to finish. Here's our documentation on setting up a Geo Redirect.Next Steps:If you're interested in implementing your own Geo redirect: start a free trial today. In addition to geo redirection, you'll have access to all the personalization tools like content replacement, image replacement, and website personalization. We're excited to help you win the consideration phase for your business!You might also like:GeoFli Custom Experience URLsInternational Targeting with GeoFliPersonalization Software Landscape
