By Katya Linossi

Personalisation is a ‘must have’ for any relevant, strategically aligned website across all sectors from financial services to charities. Although far from a new idea – we’ve been seeing it play out in chocolates, monogrammed jumpers and licence plates for years – it is something that has taken the digital sector by storm and organisations are scrambling to make sure their web presence isn’t left in the dust.

Seemingly, with every passing second, web visitors are becoming more savvy and less loyal. In an age where instant gratification is king a tailored, bespoke experience is critical – whether the site visitor is aware of it or not. Did you know, for example, that Google personalises the search results it shows you?

Like most items in a digital marketing professional’s toolkit, personalisation is changing rapidly. When originally used, personalisation helped to drive dwell times, promote deeper navigation into a website and highlight advertisements and promotions. While these objectives are still relevant, marketers, aware of the ever-present demand of return on investment, have used personalisation to up and cross sell eCommerce transactions. Today, personalisation is increasingly used as a means to expedite the delivery of tailored information to a visitor, making the site useful and attractive – thereby increasing the likelihood of a return visit.

Personalisation sits well with the social media mantra of “engage, don’t broadcast” and leading organisations are using personalised web experiences to connect with customers, support their marketing objectives, build brand loyalty and improve stickiness. Some recent, notable examples of personalisation include:

• ASDA - recommended shopping lists based on previous purchases

• Blogger - instantly viewable unique content

• Google - modified search results based on searcher behaviour

• Groupon - offers based on location

• National Autistic Society - tailored content based on user profile

• Nike ID - design and purchase bespoke products

Providing a personalised experience requires building knowledge of your visitors’ profiles as well as their motivations and preferences. It might seem fairly basic and, in essence it is, but this is often the area that is skimmed over in a web project as it requires the right tools and expertise. Functionality and design should drive organisational objectives and meet user expectations as seamlessly as possible. Without a firm grasp of the user, matching these accurately is near impossible and the effectiveness of the project is put at risk.

That being said, there is no doubt that collecting and consolidating data for analysis and segmentation can be challenging. It requires data to be merged and critically analysed from multiple sources. Common sources of segmentation data include: gender, age, marital status and birthday, clickstream, site searches and existing engagement through comments on blogs and links clicked within emails. Working with a provider who understands segmentation, empowers marketing teams to analyse and respond to their visitors demands in new and innovative ways.

A useful way to segment the data is to identify ‘personas’ for different types of visitors. Content and messaging strategies for each persona can then be developed. The analysis doesn’t stop there as it is important to continuously test new content and the assumptions about different personas so that engagement strategies can be tuned to give web visitors a better experience every time they come to your site.

While there is no doubt that the early adopters of personalisation were e-commerce sites (who can forget Amazon’s “Today’s recommendations for you”) websites across most business sectors now offer some level of tailored content. The charity sector, in particular, has used personalisation to increase loyalty, engagement and differentiation in a crowded space.

The National Autistic Society (NAS) is a recent example of this adaptation, with the re-launch of its website (www.autism.org.uk). Their objective was to provide personalisation by interest, location and accessibility needs. They promoted engagement by allowing users to comment and rate the content, providing detailed feedback on satisfaction levels.

The solution, implemented by ClearPeople, enabled the NAS to develop a unique taxonomy that allows content to be cross-referenced across the site using metadata features developed by ClearPeople. This supports a personalised experience for site visitors by delivering content that is relevant to them based on their selected interest.

In addition to public facing websites, organisations have adapted the ‘make it personal’ ideology to their internal web communications, particularly with regards to intranets. ClearPeople’s clients come to them for unique central portals that inspire use by reflecting the unique company culture, employee work styles and personal preferences. This is a tactical decision to encourage knowledge sharing and reduce the risk of lost information..

As the digital environment continues to shift, there are bound to be exciting developments in personalisation for websites and all digital communications. The challenge will be to create synergy between multiple campaigns and keep pace with the continuously evolving user expectation. Keep your eye on this space and the next time you are browsing the web, try to think about how your own experience has been tailored.

About the author

Katya co-founded ClearPeople Ltd in 2003 and has been instrumental in the delivery of ClearPeople’s website services since that time. Katya has over 15 years extensive international experience in both marketing and technical roles for software companies and has also managed large web-based projects and teams for blue chip clients like Microsoft and Ford. She also holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Honours in Marketing, as well as a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Warwick.

About the company

Established in 2003, ClearPeople holds three Microsoft Gold Competencies and is a Certified Solution Partner for Sitecore. The company recently launched a creative services division, Loud & Clear, to cater for both the growing interest in SharePoint 2010 as a creative platform as well as the continuing high demand for Sitecore CMS. Loud & Clear’s client roster includes SEGA and Turner (a Times Warner Company).

http://www.loudandcleardigital.com