I saw a few discussions on LinkedIn Answers about dynamic content and I realized there is some confusion about the term and what it means. People confused dynamic content with website optimization. I wanted to clarify the difference here.

There is  a fundamental difference between optimizing content based on a/b testing using tools such as Google Website Optimizer and serving targeted content based on manual or automatic segmentation rules. The first means someone creating multiple versions of a webpage and then activating a tool to measure which page variation is the most effective in achieving a certain conversion goal.

When we talk about Dynamic content in the segmentation/targeting space we mean that content will change dynamically based on visitor’s attributes and intent: for example promotional banners will change based on search keywords or Geolocation data. Of course it’s important to run testing on dynamic targeted content to measure its impact  on conversion rates and sales but this testing is very different than the a/b testing done for optimization.