COM-425 Week 10

Personalisation is when an e-business website gathers information on regular site visitors; analysis’s the information and delivers the right information to the visitor at the right time.  There are a number of personalisation techniques used by companies to promote products, recommend products and advertise products to a potential customer.  The business collects information on a user is to establish their hobbies and interests or roles in an organisation.  Browsing and buying patterns are also assessed.  The buying pattern on a customer is held on a database by an e-business.   From these patterns, the business can establish and relate a number of products to the information they hold on a user.  This information can then be displayed on the website to the user the next time they visit the site.  This can be done in the form of text, links or images on the users account page.  A good example of this is Amazon.com.  Each purchase that a user makes is stored on the customers buying history.  From this, the website recommends specific products to the user based on previous purchases.

There are problems with personalisation on websites.  One big problem is what products are filtered for some users.  A user may be interested in motorsport and formula one racing for example, but when he/she logs onto their HMV account it recommends a DVD on horse racing.  Another example would be the customer’s interest in computer games.  Some filters may recommend games that the user has no interest in.

Personalisation has become a feature that is found in almost every e-business website.  I believe that to be a successful online business, you must have personalisation.  I believe it attracts visitors back to a website time and time again and I also believe it has an impact on what products a user buys from a particular website. Good implementation of personalisation on a website could have a big impact on the number of potential customers a business could have.