Personalisation and customisation is steadily becoming a favoured business model of many online businesses. Many online websites use personalisation as a means of gettin to know customers by observing their viewing habits and from the information gathered, recommends items/services that might be of interest. Many users feel that the process is evasive. Privacy is a massive issue when discussing personalisation; many users would prefer to have the option to remain anonymous.
In my opinion, personalisation is an effective web tool helping you and the organisation in many different areas. Personalisation saves the user time, in terms of entering repetitive details. Users can enter details (such as transactional details) on a website and the website may use personalisation as a way of saving the information for the user to use in the future. Online e-commerce sites use personalisation as a way of recommending you products on the basis of your purchase (search) history.
Amazon is a prime example of personalisation at work. When you log into your account, you can click on your personal account page, which gives details of your purchase history and recommended items.
When I log into my account page, I am able to see dynamic recommendations. These recommendations can enable the user to be introduced to new products/services where they might not have known/noticed before.
Amazon also saves your recent history, so you can easily click your account page and then click the item in question without having to type its name into the search bar. Organisations, such as Amazon, can filter out irrelevant information based on recently viewed products to deliver relevant, interesting products/services to the user.
However, many users don’t like the idea of using their personal information (viewing history) to determine an option. Many feel that sharing personal information is a great risk that can lead to irrelevance or infringements. Certain websites monitor the user’s activity and accumulate adverts based on keywords or user activity. A major example of this type of act taking place is on the popular social networking website ‘Facebook’.
When you log into Facebook, you’re immediately greeted by adverts placed directly at the side of the window. From personal experience, many of the adverts generated are irrelevant and clutter your ‘personal’ space.
Certain aspects of your interactivity is recorded and used to generate adverts. Facebook can pick up on an individual keyword through your Facebook search history or on your personal space and then immediately start displaying adverts, which may not even be relevant.
Examples of advertisements on Facebook
I feel that this is a poor example of personalisation as it can be classed as a nuisance, due to the positioning of the adverts and also due to relevance. But, if you see an advert, which may be irrelevant, Facebook have installed a feature that can enable the user to block the advert to avoid appearing on their web space.
Personally, I feel that personalisation is a great way to interpret data and to present a meaningful array of options to the user. Personalisation in order to be effective needs to be done appropriately without being ambiguous, users need to be told what information is being recorded, in what manner and are they given the option to not take part. Personalisation is a useful in terms of introducing new products/services to the user and to make users aware of certain events/products/services through the use of advertising. Websites can gather customer interactivity and then display adverts based on the topic area. By giving relevant details to customers, they will in turn be more inclined to return to the website due to it’s reliability.
No comments:
Post a Comment