How to Create and Use Conditional Website Blocks with Elementor or Shortcode

Conditional Content is one of the defining features of your website framework. Despite the fact the Conditional Content blocks are often avoided because of the perceived complexity, they seriously amplify the effectiveness of any organic or promoted funnel. We appreciate that many brokers just 'want a website', and that's find, but if and when the time comes to improve upon its effectiveness, the framework we've built is unquestionably the most powerful in the industry, and it will support whatever requirement you throw at it.

An understanding of Interest Types is required before engaging with Conditional Content Blocks. The content shown to a user in any Block is resolved on the basis of the interest score for each specific website user, so your website will shape itself around each and every user.

The basic method of creating blocks is detailed in an FAQ titled "Creating Basic Website Blocks and Returning Content with Elementor or Shortcode. This FAQ will only look at the Conditional aspects of each block.

  Conditional Content and Blocks are a Big Topic

Conditional Content and Conditional Blocks are a big topic. The FAQ providing an introduction to Conditional Content should be referenced for a better understanding of our conditional methods, and there's an FAQ that details the basic usage of Blocks. In essence, Conditional Content is a means to show different content to different users based on their resolved borrowing objective, occupation, or interest type -- It is an extremely powerful feature. Blocks may be used in the same way, but their primary purpose is to manufacture Blocks of content that are 'recycled' on your website in multiple locations (allowing a global update with a single edit).

Anything Conditional is an advanced topic, but if you have the resources to assign effort into these modules, and you have the necessary website traffic to justify the time, you will invariably see far better results. All marketing - and your nurturing marketing funnels in particular - is predicated on relevance, and conditional content serves this primary funnel objective.

Example Block: It's worth noting that the paragraphs above will likely be repeated in multiple FAQs, and they will required ongoing edits as more resources are created. As such, this entire block of text (including the title) was created as a block .

  Categories and Interest Tags

First, you may access the Blocks module by following the 'Contentus' icon in the 'Website' module. Select the 'Blocks' submenu item to return block options. Despite the module providing extensive conditional features, it's not given home in the Conditional module because the primary reason the feature is used is to create general website content - not conditional content.

  Pictured: First, you may access the Blocks module by following the 'Contentus' icon in the 'Website' module. Select the 'Blocks' submenu item to return block options.

The focus of the Resolved Content Block as introduced in this FAQ is on categories - not tags. The Interest tags are generally used by other Block features.

  Conditional and Fixed Block Types

A number of block types are available that will return your content in various ways. Some block types are fixed in that they show a specific block and nothing more. Others will resolved based on interest or other identified attributes. Block types are generally as follows (the leading text is the type attribute used in shortcode):

• block - this is the default method. It is used to return a single block with no conditional resolution applied.
• category - used when returning a block on the basis of its assigned category.
• group - used when returning a block based its assigned group.
• interest - used when returning a block based on a resolved and specific interest type (or a random block assigned to a single interest).
• resolved - used when returning content based on the resolved interest type. The resolved content is on the basis of category - not interest.

For this FAQ we're going to use the resolved block type.

  The Resolved Content Block and Shortcode

Our initial objective is to create a block of content that will be returned to a user when they're resolved to the 'Demo One' category. This would normally be 'First Home Buyer' or something similar - we're obviously using 'Demo One' (demo_one) for the purpose of the demonstration. A category is just a single interest, but it's considered a parent interest in the world of blocks, and the category is used by the primary Elementor widget (and shortcode) to return conditional content.

Demo Interests: For the purpose of our demonstration, we've created two interests  in Yabber as 'Demo One' and 'Demo Two'. In reality, these interests would be placeholders for real interest types, such as 'First Home Buyer' and 'Refinancing'. Not all interests are Block categories (because not all of them are important enough), so the Category must be explicitly created.

We'll go ahead and create a Conditional Block, or one that will be shown when the user is resolved to the 'demo_one' interest category (the interest tags are used for other block types). Again, we have assigned this specific block to the 'Demo One' category, and we have also assigned it to various interest tags. For the purpose of primary resolved conditional content, the interest tags are ignored.

  Pictured: We'll go ahead and create a Conditional Block, or one that will be shown when the user is resolved to the 'demo_one' interest category (the interest tags are used for other block types). Again, we have assigned this specific block to the 'Demo One' category, and we have also assigned it to various interest tags. For the purpose of primary resolved conditional content, the interest tags are ignored.

Note that the 'Demo One' category is highlighted (recognised as an interest in Yabber and your website by way of the demo_one tag). This block of content will be shown when the demo_one interest type is resolved by way of your website or Yabber.

Because we want to demo how to show content on the basis of multiple interests (in our case, demo_one and demo_two), I'll go a ahead and create a second block of content  that I'll assign to the Demo Two (demo_two) category.

While it's normal to build your content with the drag-and-drop Elementor widget, we'll look at a shortcode example. The format of the resolved shortcode is as follows: [bm_block type="resolved" default="73459"]. In this case, the type is resolved (meaning that block content should served to a user when user objectives are identified), and we've also defined our default block, or the block that will show  when interest cannot be resolved, or when there's no content to show for the resolved interest (in our case, a Block with an ID of 73459 was chosen to show by default).

Now, we've only created two blocks for the purpose of this example, but it's highly likely that all the other examples on this website will interfere with the result... and this is both expected and further indication of how effective the system functions. However, in order to force content to show, we'll assign very high interest scores (this is the content you're meant to see ).

To make it very clear what the conditional content block is we'll apply a small left border to the content.

Whatever content it is you're seeing below, we'll force a change by way of a [link url="73446" interest="demo_one" rs="30000"]this link[/link] (discussed in another article), so go ahead and click on this link and scroll back to the conditional content shown below (which should resolve to the demo_one content). We'll do the same thing to try and force demo_two content, so click on this link and the content will swap again (if it doesn't, check your interest scores below - we'll always resolve to the interest with highest score).

FYI, your interest scores are shown below. You will see how we've forced our demo interests in order to force our demo content.

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What we're just demonstrated is an extremely powerful feature. The funnel is a two-way conversation, and the conditional content permits your website to respond to the user in a way that maintains relevance, and relevance is the key to conversions.

You will want to create categories for all your primary borrowing types, and assign one or more pieces of content to those categories. The content served to each resolved category is selected at random from a pool of options and this is done to split-test the effectiveness of content blocks - another seriously advanced topic. However, for general usage, you will assign a single block to each category as it'll give you precise control over what is returned.

The catch? Traffic is required in order to justify the investment of time into creating conditional content. Without traffic, your efforts won't be rewarded.

  The Resolved Content Block with Elementor

The shortcode we introduced above is complicated. In using an the Elementor option you will simply drag-and-drop the applicable block  onto your page, define the interest condition, select an optional page, and the result will be returned. The first option that permits you to define the 'interest' is a little confusing since it's not really required. It should only be selected when you would like to cycle through blocks of content assigned to a specific interest type (when used on a purpose-driven page, such as a First Home Buyer page). Leave as 'empty' to have the interest resolved.

  Pictured: The shortcode we introduced above is complicated. In using an the Elementor option you will simply drag-and-drop the applicable block onto your page, define the interest condition, select an optional page, and the result will be returned. The first option that permits you to define the 'interest' is a little confusing since it's not really required. It should only be selected when you would like to cycle through blocks of content assigned to a specific interest type (when used on a purpose-driven page, such as a First Home Buyer page). Leave as 'empty' to have the interest resolved.

When selecting a default page you should be mindful of the location the content will be shown.

  Other Block Types

There are a large number of Elementor Block  and shortcode options that'll return content in various ways, but they'll be introduced in other FAQ articles. It's the Resolved Block that is the primary method of returning Block-based conditional content.

Another standalone system used for well over 10-years is introduced in an article titled "How to Use the Legacy Conditional Content Blocks " (it's this module that powers the geographic content blocks).

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  Related Content Block FAQs

FAQs relating to use of Content Blocks.

  Conditional Content FAQs

The Conditional content module is significant. The FAQs listed below may exclude some of the basic conditional features, such as some of the Front Page conditional blocks.