Delivering persona-based personalization for lead generation

The Challenge

Yamaha WaterCraft Group is responsible for the sales, marketing, and distribution of Yamaha WaveRunners and Yamaha Boats across the United States. Their websites were struggling to fulfil the wide-reaching ambitions of the brand. And, with the same static web pages being delivered to every visitor, every time they came to the site, they were losing the custom of users expecting a highly personalized and intuitive digital experience.

Yamaha WaterCraft group enlisted the help of Episerver partner Whereoware to redesign their websites to be modern, personalized, user friendly, and ultimately, capable of generating high quality leads to local dealerships.

The Solution

With Episerver’s automatic landing pages, both sites can easily attract long-tail organic search traffic, from otherwise highly competitive keywords, making it easier for potential buyers to find them. Since site launch, Yamaha WaveRunners has seen an 84% increase in site traffic, and Yamaha Boats saw a 92% increase in site traffic. Once on site, visitors are now greeted with a modern and clean website that lets environmental and lifestyle imagery show off product details.

With a focus on the end consumer, Yamaha and Whereoware developed an interactive quiz on both homepages to help consumers decide on the best WaveRunner or Boat for their interests, budget and lifestyle. They further this focus by personalizing messaging, images and promotions throughout the website, based on user behaviour. If a website visitor fits the “21-foot boat persona”, the homepage slider features a streaming video and environmental images of a 21-foot boat. As they scroll down the page, product images and text change to be more relevant to a consumer shopping for a 21-foot boat. This persona-based personalization continues throughout internal site pages. Serving the right content to the right person helps prospective customers find the Yamaha products, videos, top technologies, and dealer locations they need to make an informed shopping decision.

Our products ignite a passion and a drive for amazing experiences in our customers, and we wanted our digital, mobile and web experience to exude that same energy. Working with Whereoware, and Episerver allowed us to tap into the latest technology and development platforms, along with a world class design and UX team, to bring our products to life in way that replicates the fun and excitement our customers have on the water.

- Bryan Seti, general manager of Yamaha’s Watercraft Group.