As the focus of many eMarketers starts to move from raw traffic generation activities to in-site marketing optimization (and it’s about time), it is a perfect time for us to have a look at the ‘vendor sandbox’ around web personalization. By Sandbox, I mean the category of technology and service providers that can be commonly grouped around a particular discipline. ‘Analytics’ is a good example. “Do you have an analytics vendor?” ……is a reasonable question to ask. “Do you have a ‘Personalization’ vendor?”…… is not.

It has only been within the last six months that we have taken most of the commonly used terms in the analytics space to the point where there is an agreed upon set of definitions (Web Analytics Association Standards Committee – http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/cmt/?5).

Some of the site specific terms we use as eCommerce marketers are fairly straightforward. Product Recommendation software for example, has a fairly self-evident role on a website (people who bought that also liked this!). Analytics, need I say more.

Certain terms are less clearly defined, but still pretty obvious to wrap your head around: Word of Mouth (WoM) marketing as an example. Customer driven content in the form of reviews, uploaded video, pictures etc.

Personalization? At least as it relates to internet marketing, it’s a term about as nebulous as they come….·

Is it based on explicit user action? (Think customizing your Yahoo or Google homepage)·

Is it based on implicit customer need? (Customer buys radio, you show them batteries)·

Is it based on the expectation of implicit need based on profile? (Customer behavior indicates they are lost mid-visit, so content is predictively displayed with customer service/sales incentive options)

(My eyes crossed just writing that – this post is getting very “Zen and the Art of Website Maintenance”) Here’s my two cents on the issue. Personalization is not an industry sandbox, it is an objective. It can only be measured in qualitative terms. Want to know if your website is personable? Start interviewing your customers. Looking for a personalization vendor? Make sure you look at the ways in which you would like to be personable and then select a vendor accordingly.

My next few blog posts will describe in more detail the three ways of making your site more personable, with pros, cons and better descriptors so that we can advance beyond the term ‘personalization’. Feel free to post any thoughts to the comments about either your experience with, or interest in, making a site more personable.