Knowing something about the web user is at the heart of online personalization…it’s about targeting the right content to the right person at the right time… and to do that you need to understand the user’s intent. Here at ATG, we’re passionate about personalization and treating online shoppers uniquely and individually based on who they are and what they’re trying to accomplish. Well, it looks like Google has joined our personalization party. Based on some articles and blog posts I’ve recently read, Google is clearly rallying around the use of personalization to better target both ads and search results.

I thought this Google quote from a recent Financial Times article stated the challenge in making an online experience more relevant and hence more useful:

“We cannot even answer the most basic questions because we don’t know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Google’s expansion.”

The article goes on to state… The race to accumulate the most comprehensive database of individual information has become the new battleground for search engines as it will allow the industry to offer far more personalised advertisements.

Wow… we have a race to know as much about me as possible. That’s a little eerie and big brotherish. But I’m not sure I mind if you make my life easier. What’s at stake? Plenty for the Google advertiser. After all, more relevant ads mean more effective adword campaigns and better ROI on marketing investments.

What’s in it for the consumer? That’s a little more controversial. The hope is that Google, by using past end users online behavior and preference data, will improve relevancy of the search results and content presented for consumers. In other words, we find what we’re looking for more often and more quickly. Some fear there’s a privacy issue in storing all the personal information to accomplish this. I’m less concerned about that… I’m comfortable that Google’s data will not be shared outside of Google and that it is secure. What I wonder is if Google can really “guess” at what I’m searching for and return content that makes more sense based on the past keywords I’ve typed. I can see frequent cases where past keywords might not even be relative to the search at hand and in some cases make the results worse. In fact, I would argue that the Google user, and users of search in general, have become very savvy at typing in the right combination of keywords and are more likely to get more relative responses if they’re totally in command. Time will tell.

Bottom line, there are limits to how far online personalization could go and should go… The answer may lie somewhere in the middle of using past behavior and current intent. Personalization technology is more powerful if it uses both implicit and explicit criteria to target content. But the key is balancing what the customer tells you to purposefully use vs. using some artificial intelligence to return the “right” content. If you’re implementing personalization on your eCommerce site, be careful to understand the user’s intent when you create rules to target your content. Past historical data can be a good indicator, but it’s not always relative to the search at hand, or in the eCommerce case, the purchase at hand.

[tags] Google, personalization, privacy [/tags]

On to the “Maximizing Your Marketing Investments to Attract the Right Visitors” panel, including:

• Kelly O’Neill, Product Marketing Director, ATG (moderator)
• Cindy McGuire, Web Content Manager, Casual Male Retail Group, Inc.
• Joey Wilson, Director of Marketing Strategy, Sapient
• Karen Weber, Assistant Vice President, e-Marketing, Irwin Union Bank
• Link Walls, Senior Product Manager, Search Services, ChannelAdvisor

One topic the panel spent a lot of time on is optimizing personalization. And, yes, it requires the brand maintaining control (there’s that word again). We’ve blown by the time when personas were enough. It’s now all about needs-based marketing that identifies and responds to what an individual customer needs right now and feeds them the right content and offers. Does this mean abandoning personas? No, of course not. It does mean, however, giving merchants the ability to dynamically change the site and marketing offers to motivate an actual individual.

[tags] e-commerce, personalization, needs-based marketing, Insight Live 2007 [/tags]

Shawn Freeman advises companies that are thinking about incorporating the mobile channel into their marketing plans to start by using it for customer service. That said, Handango is also seeing an increasing trend of on-device transactions (approximately 20% of their customers currently transact online), so it’s not too soon to put that toe in the water.

[tags] mobile computing, marketing, customer service, Insight Live 2007 [/tags]

Shawn Freeman, SVP of Product Strategy and Technology for Handango is giving a talk on Mobile Computing and the Digital Media Business. He spent a few slides previewing some expected new devices and the one he mentioned being most excited about is the Apple iPhone. Because of Apple’s decision to not allow third-party application development for the iPhone, Handango won’t directly make any money from the iPhone b/c they can’t sell add-on apps for it. What they like about it is the fact that they think the product will (in Apple tradition) create such an excellent user experience that it will put a lot of pressure on the rest of the market to do the same.

Interesting perspective. Makes me wonder if there are other pressure appliers in other industries. Who do you think they are?

[tags] Apple, iPhone, Insight Live 2007 [/tags]

Well we’ve been talking *at* you quite a bit since the start of Insight Live – but we’d love to hear what’s on your mind…Please feel free to post a comment or two and let your voice be heard. We’ve got an internet cafe, as you know, in the foyer, if you’d like to use that.

Please – we welcome any feedback!

Interesting thoughts on customer interaction strategies from John Federman, CEO of eStara (an ATG company). It’s not all about self-service. It can’t be…

Today, more than ever, products and services offered online are more complex (and pricey!) This drives the need for multi-channel interactions. Shopping across multi-channels is now not an anomaly – more and more, transactions, as they become more complex (especially financial services, automotive, travel, expensive retail, etc) are executed, by the buyer, through a multitude of channels. It’s critical to offer *choice* of interaction for the customer. It’s critical to seamlessly move buyers from the web to other channels – if they need it.

So the secrete lies in a simple button. A click. A call. Click to Call lets users click a button embedded within any online communication (Web site, e-mail, banner ad, search engine listing, etc.) and immediately speak with a customer service representative.

The challenge is the balance – you want to self-serve to keep costs down, but you certainly DON’T want to lose that customer through frustration or trepidation. So you need to offer the interaction choice they are most comfortable with. You’ll win customers for life that way. The right contact at the right time is crucial.

By offering choice in interaction, you’re going to see a higher conversion rate online, and a 2:1 ratio in conversions offline. You’re going to decrease shopping cart abandonment.

Your customer is satisfied – and, quite likely, with you for life.

One thing from Chris Anderson’s panel that jumped out at me was the fact, despite the competition-driven price pressure on products in the head, margins of Long Tail products can deteriorate the longer they sit on virtual shelves. This lead into a discussion of the importance of recommendations and search in driving consumers to the products they want. The panel seemed split on which has the bigger impact on driving sales. While its logical that doing both well is the best answer, it was interesting that each panel member clearly identified one or the other as more important.

Do you ‘prefer’ one over the other and, if so, what factors (type of products, customer demographic) contribute to your preference?

Very interesting bit from Chris Anderson’s talk… 

On Amazon, the #1 determining factor for people buying or not is the comfort provided by complete information in the product listing (image of book cover, summary, reviews, metadata, etc.). The demand curve for books at Amazon falls off the Long Tail model for books where there is no book cover image provided or other key elements of the product listing are missing. Clearly, this information exists…both the authors/publishers and Amazon itself are leaving money on the table by not taking the low-to-no cost step of supplying it adequately. Not to be overly self-promotional, but clearly this supports the message we’re putting forth in our product previews this week: putting more control in the hands of merchandisers. It’s interesting that the rapid advances we’re seeing in technology actually bring people into the online selling process more, not less. We’ve heard a lot this week about customer ratings and recommendations (and Chris reinforced this nicely through examples of Netflix customer satisfaction being higher for releases that have been out longer and, hence, have more recommendation data available). At the same time, the Amazon example above illustrates that it really still is up to brands to stay in “control” even in a Web 2.0 world. 

Chris Anderson kicks it off with this morning’s keynote, where he’ll discuss his Long Tail theory. Following that is a panel moderated by Chris on “Sustaining e-Commerce Growth in an Extremely Competitive Environment.” The panelists are:

• Curt Avalone, General Manager CVS.com
• Shawn Freeman, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy and Technology, Handango
• Jimmy Hale, Vice President Application Development, Neiman Marcus
• Marty Keane, Vice President e-Commerce, Bluefly

 [tags] The Long Tail, Chris Anderson, e-commerce, Insight Live 2007 [/tags]