Why Personalization Programs Struggle

So why aren’t we living in a world of perfect personalization? We've been hearing for a while that it'll be the next big thing, so why isn't it happening?

Because it’s hard.  There's just too much to consider, especially if you're after the ultimate goal of 1-to-1 personalization.

In my experience, there are three areas where personalization strategies come completely unstuck.  The first is in the data capture, the second is the classification and design of ‘personas’, and the third is in the visual design.

1. Data capture:  what data can you access?

Search keywords?
PPC campaign information?
Marketing campaign engagement?
Browsing history?
Purchase history?
Can you get geographic or demographic information?
Surely you can’t form a 1x1 relationship between each individual user and their experience? 
Previous purchaser?  And are you going to try and sell them another one of what they just bought?
Traffic source:  search/display/social?
What products are they looking at?
What have they added to basket?

2. Classification:  how are you going to decide how to aggregate and categorise all this data?  

Is it a new user?  Return user?

And the biggest crunch:  how are you going to then transfer these classifications to your Content Management System, or to your Targeting engine, so that it knows which category to place User #12345 into.  And that’s just where the fun begins.

And how do you choose the right data?  I'm personally becoming bored of seeing recommendations based on items I've bought:  "You bought this printer... how about this printer?" and "You recently purchased a new pair of shoes... would you like to buy a pair of shoes?" As an industry we seem to lack the sophistication that says, "You bought this printer - would you like to buy some ink for it?" or "You bought these shoes, would you like to buy this polish, or these laces?"

3. Visual Design

For each category or persona that you identify, you will need to have a corresponding version of your site.  For example, you’ll need to have a banner that promotes a particular product category (a holiday in France, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the USA); or you may need to have links to content about men’s shoes; women’s shoes; slippers or sports shoes. 

And your site merchandising team now needs to multiply its efforts for its campaigns. 

Previously, they needed one banner for the pre-Christmas campaign; now, they need to produce four, five or more instead.  This comes as they are approaching their busiest period (because that’s when you’ll get more traffic in and want to maximise its performance) and haven’t got time to generate duplicated content just for one banner.

Fortunately, there are ways of minimizing the headaches that you can encounter when you’re trying to get personalization up and running (or keeping it going).

Why not take the existing content, and show it to users in a different order?  Years ago, there was a mantra (with a meme, probably) going around that told us to 'Remember: There is no fold' but I've never subscribed to that view.  Analytics regularly shows us that most users don't scroll down to see our wonderful content lying just below the edge of their monitor (or their phone screen).  So, if you can identify a customer as someone looking for men's shoes, or women's sports shoes, or a 4x4, or a hatchback, or a plasma TV, then why not show that particular product category first (i.e. above the fold, or at least the first thing below it)?



4. Solutions

The flavour du jour in our house is Airfix modelling - building 1/72 or 1/48 scale vehicles and aircraft, so let's use that as an example, and visit  one of the largest online modelling stores in the UK, Wonderland Models.

Their homepage has a very large leading banner, which rotates like a carousel around five different images: a branding image; radio controlled cars; toy animals and figures; toys and playsets; and plastic model kits.  The opportunity here is to target users (either return visitors, which is easier, or new users, which is trickier) and show them the banner which is most relevant to them. 

The Wonderland Models homepage.  The black line is the fold on my desktop.

How do you select which banner?  By using the data that users are sharing with you - their previous visits, items they've browsed (or added to cart), or what they're looking for in your site search... and so on.  Here, the question of targeted content is simpler - show them the existing banner which closest matches their needs - but the data is trickier.  However, the banners and categories will help you determine the data categorization that you need to - you'll probably find this in your site architecture.

However, here's the bonus:  when you've classified (or segmented) your user, you can use this data again... lower down on the same page.  Most sites duplicate their links, or have multiple links around similar themes, and Wonderland Models is no exception. Here, the secondary categories are Radio Control; Models and Kits; Toys and Collectables; Paints, Tools and Materials; Model Railways and Sale.  These overlap with the banner categories, and with a bit of tweaking, the same data source could be used to drive targeting in both segments.  The win here is that with six categories (and a large part of the web page being targeted), there are thirty different combinations for just the first two slots, with six options for the first position, and five for the second.  This will be useful as the content is long and requires considerable scrolling.

The second and third folds on Wonderland Models.  The black lines show the folds.

Most analytics packages have an integration with CMS’s or targeting platforms.  Adobe Analytics has Target, which is its testing and targeting tool.  It's possible to connect the data from Analytics into Target (and I suspect your Adobe support team would be happy to help) and then use this to make an educated guess on which content to show to your visitors.  At the very least, you could run an A/B test.

5. The Challenge

The main reason personalization programs struggle to get going is (and I hate to use this expression, but here goes) that they aren't agile enough.  At a time when ecommerce is starting to use the product model and forming agile teams, it seems like personalization is often stuck in a waterfall approach.  There's no plan to form a minimum viable product, and try small steps - instead, it's wholesale all-in build the monolith, which takes months, then suffers a "funding reprioritization" since the program has nothing to show for its money so far...  this makes it even harder to gain traction (and funding) next time around.

6. The Start

So, don't be afraid to start small.  If you're resequencing the existing content on your home page, and you have three pieces of content, then there are six different ways that the content can be shown.  Without getting into the maths, there's ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB and CBA.  And you've already created six segments for six personas.  Or at least you've started, and that's what matters.  I've mentioned in a previous article about personalization and sequencing that if you can add in more content into your 'content bank' then the number of variations you can show increases exponentially.  So if you can show the value of resequencing what you already have, then you are in a stronger position to ask for additional content.  Engaging with an already-overloaded merchandising team is going to slow you down and frustrate them, so only work with them when you have something up-and-running to demonstrate.

Remember - start small, build up your MVP and only bring in stakeholders when you need to.  If you want to travel far, travel together, but if you want to travel quickly, travel light!