How to Set Up Geotargeting on Your Website

Part of our Geotargeting series - Read the full Geotargeting Guide

Setting up geotargeting on your website takes about 15 minutes. Not an afternoon, not a sprint cycle. You add a script, upload some images, set location rules, and publish. Here is the full walkthrough using ConversionWax.

Prerequisites

You need two things before you start:

A ConversionWax account. The free plan covers up to 5,000 pageviews per month. No credit card required. Sign up, create a website in the dashboard, and you are ready.

Your image variants. At minimum, prepare two versions of the banner you want to personalize - one for your target location and one default. For each version, have desktop (landscape), tablet, and mobile (vertical) crops ready. You can start with a single location and expand later.

Step 1: Add the Embed Code

This works with any platform: Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Squarespace, or custom code. One script snippet in the header, one embed tag where the content goes. No plugins, no deep integrations.

Step 2: Upload Location-Specific Assets

Use tags to organize your uploads. Create tags like "denver-hero," "miami-hero," or "default-hero" so you can filter assets quickly when building banners later. Tags are color-coded and shared across banners and assets within each website.

Step 3: Create Banners with Responsive Variants

You can also set custom breakpoints beyond the default device sizes. If your site design shifts at 1024px instead of the typical tablet breakpoint, set that as your pixel width for the tablet slot.

Set alt text for each asset (for accessibility and SEO) and add click URLs if the banner should link somewhere. Create one banner per location variant - "Hero - Denver," "Hero - Miami," "Hero - Default."

Step 4: Set Location Display Rules

Location detection works via IP address and runs in milliseconds. City-level targeting is where the strongest conversion lift happens because the content feels recognizably local rather than just regional.

You can also layer location rules with other display rules. For example: show a specific banner to Denver visitors who arrived via a UTM campaign parameter. Or show different imagery to Denver visitors during business hours versus evenings. Rules stack, and the specificity is where the real results show up.

Step 5: Set Fallback Content

The fallback is also your control group for A/B testing. When you turn on split testing, half of your traffic in a targeted location sees the geo-specific variant (Version A) and half sees the default (Version B). That is how you measure whether your Denver imagery actually outperforms the generic banner for Denver visitors.

Step 6: Publish and Monitor

Once live, check your analytics. ConversionWax tracks three metrics per banner: clicks, page loads, and renders. The distinction matters - a page load means the page was viewed, a render means the banner was actually displayed in the viewport, and a click means someone interacted with it.

Analytics granularity depends on your plan. Starter gives daily data, Growth adds hourly, and Professional/Premier adds 5-minute intervals. For most teams, daily data is enough to validate that geotargeting is working. Hourly data helps you spot time-of-day patterns. Five-minute granularity is for high-traffic sites running time-sensitive promotions.

What to Do After Setup

Give your geo-targeted banners two to four weeks to collect enough data. Then look at the A/B test results. If the geo-targeted variant outperforms the default, expand to more locations. If it does not, test different imagery before giving up on that market - the location targeting might be correct but the image choice might be wrong.

The most common mistake is trying to set up too many locations at once. Start with two or three, prove the lift, then expand. Adding new location variants after the initial setup takes about 15 minutes each - upload the assets, create the banner, add the display rule, publish.

For a deeper look at what geotargeting software does and why, read our complete geotargeting guide.