Maybe Personalization Isn't That Important

Overhype

from the whooops dept

For years, it’s been standard practice of most e-commerce sites to try to “personalize” their offering to each user. Companies spent ridiculous amounts of money to offer personalized pages that matched the users specific interests. A new Jupiter study suggests they shouldn’t have bothered. The study found that personalized sites meant it was even more likely that visitors wouldn’t actually buy anything – though, it cost four times as much to maintain a personalized website. At the same time, many people avoided using personalized pages, because they were afraid of what the companies would do with their personal information. In other words, they valued the anonymity aspect much more than whatever personalized results they would get. If you look at the details, though, it isn’t necessarily a slam on personalization entirely – but on prioritizing personalization above such basic things as search and easy navigation. Those things are much more important to users than a “welcome back, your name here” tag at the top of each page. The other issue (not mentioned in the article) is that most personalization technology just isn’t very good. There’s almost no benefit to users. In the cases where it does seem to work well, though, people don’t seem to mind as much. Many people like Amazon or NetFlix recommendations, for example, and end up buying more because of them. However, many other sites just seem to put your name at the top of the page, and then pitch items “just for you”, that are clearly the junk they’re trying to clear out.