# Personalize your first slot

Target an audience with a tailored message.

In this tutorial, you will create an [experience](/explanation/experience/introduction) that shows different content to a specific audience. By the end, you will have a working personalized experience that you can toggle with a query parameter.

## Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have:

- A [Croct account](https://app.croct.com/signup) with a workspace and application set up.
- A project with the `home-hero` slot set up and rendering content. If you have not done this yet, start by [creating a slot](/immersion/tutorials/get-started/content-management).

## Create an experience

An experience lets you show different content to a specific audience. You will create one that shows a personalized welcome message when a specific query parameter is present in the URL.

1. Open the [experiences page](https://app.croct.com/redirect/organizations/-organization-/workspaces/-workspace-/experiences) in the admin app.

2. Click **New experience** and give it a name, for example `Personalized welcome`.

3. In the **Audience** tab, click **New audience**. Set the name to `Welcome parameter` and the criteria to:

   ```cql
   property welcome of page's query is "true"
   ```

   This condition matches any user whose URL contains `?welcome=true`.

4. Click the **Slot** tab and select the `home-hero` slot.

5. Click the **Content** tab and edit the content. For example, change the title to `Welcome back!` and the subtitle to `We have something special for you.`

6. Click **Publish** to start serving personalized content.

## Try it out

Verify that the experience works by toggling the query parameter:

1. **Open your application**

   Open your application and load the page as usual. You should see the default content with title `Learn more about our platform`.

2. **Add the query parameter**

   Append `?welcome=true` to the URL and reload. You should now see the personalized message with title `Welcome back!`.

3. **Remove the query parameter**

   Remove `?welcome=true` from the URL and reload. The default content should be back.

![Default vs. experience content](/assets/immersion/tutorials/get-started/slot-personalization/experience-content.png)

> **Beyond query parameters**
>
> Query parameters are handy for testing during development. In production, you would target real audiences, such as [returning users](/explanation/audience/popular-audiences#user) or [visitors from a specific location](/explanation/audience/popular-audiences#location).
>
> [Check our playbooks](/immersion/playbooks) and learn more about the most common use cases.

## Explore

- [Audiences](/explanation/audience/introduction): Discover what an audience is and how it works.
- [Analytics](/reference/analytics/experience/overview): Understand how your experiences perform across key metrics.