sitecore: understanding your visitors and user personas
DESCRIPTION
A detailed look at creating website user personas, site personalization and real world implementation considerations.TRANSCRIPT
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Delivering on the Potential
of Personalization
Randy Woods | Amanda Shiga
non~linear creations
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
What We’ll Say
• Personalization capabilities in context
• Knowing your visitor
• Building your rules
• Real world implementation considerations
• Questions and answers
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Amanda Shiga Director, Websites and
Digital Marketing
Sitecore MVP
@amandashiga
ashiga@nonlinearcreations
.com
+16477762658
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Randy Woods President of NLC
@randywoods
rwoods@nonlinecreations.
com
+16136910978
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
And You?
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
PERSONALIZATION IS EVIL
Section one
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Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Much of the Web’s future will come from delivering individualized experiences
Josh Bernhoff, Forrester Analyst
May, 1996
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
At its best, personalization is motivated by a desire to make human connections on a
non-human scale
Randy Woods
Just now
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KPIs should be viewed as
positive byproducts of this
intent • Increased conversion rate
• Increased subscriptions
• Improved click-throughs
• Higher average revenue per basket
• Shortened sales cycle
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Why Should We Care?
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Here’s Why: A Cautionary
Tale
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In 3 days DoubleClick's stock experienced a 20-
point loss
Six lawsuits; state investigations
A $1.2 billion loss
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But that can’t happen now,
right?
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But We’re Not Facebook
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You need to derive personalization rules in the same way that we interact in the real
world – from insight into the needs of your visitor
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KNOWING YOUR CUSTOMERS
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You are NOT your visitor
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
You are not your visitors
• Personas:
– Archetypes who
represent a group
• Useful for building
personalization
rules but have
specific limitations
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Personas and Types of
Personalization Implicit Personalization
• The visitor has not self-
identified
• Rules are based on what
you can observe about
the visitor
– “Digital finger print”
– “Digital body language”
Explicit Personalization
• Visitor has made contact
and provided information
• Rules are based on what
visitor has told you:
– Title
– Gender
– Previous purchases
Buying Cycle
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For implicit personalization, personas matter only in so far as they can be
discriminated from each other based on the content the visitor views
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Developing and Validating
Personas
25
1 Identify Ad Hoc Personas
2 Collect User Data
3 Analysis
4 Review and Prioritization
5 Flesh our Personas
6 Communicate to Organization
2 Collect User Data
5 Flesh our Personas
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Conceived Personas
Analytic Data
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BUILDING AND EVALUATING
YOUR RULES
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72 Dimensions
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Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
The “Buying” Cycle –
Personas in Time
Basic Information Gathering
Detailed Information Gathering
Narrowing Scope
Validating Understanding
Selecting a Contender
Negotiating Close
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Map the Buying Cycle
Basic Information Gathering
Detailed Information Gathering
Narrowing Scope
Validating Understanding
Selecting a Contender
Negotiating Close
31
How do these software- as- a- service (Saas) products
compare to the on- premises solutions?
Our HR management system is down again. There must be
something better out there.
Can these three SaaS HR solutions meet our needs?
What do they cost? How stable are they?
What do the analysts think
of HRX-online? What
do current users think?
The pricing the sales person gave me seems okay. And the special only runs until end of
quarter
Now I just need to get finance involved. Oh, and IT to
decommission the old system.
Wow. That took longer than expected. I’m glad we’re finally
live
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
The “Buying” Cycle:
The Implicit > Explicit
Transition
Basic Information Gathering
Detailed Information Gathering
Narrowing Scope
Validating Understanding
Selecting a Contender
Negotiating Close
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The Handoff
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Personalization Paradox
Geography Search Term
Company
Content Viewed
Clickstream
Accuracy of Persona match
Gender Previous
purchases
Social interactions
Etc.
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Building Personalization
Rules
Persona + Buying
Cycle Stage = Interest
Content you
believe will move cycle
forward
Analytics
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Evaluating Success of
Personalization Rules
0.00%
1.00%
2.00%
3.00%
4.00%
5.00%
6.00%
Month 1 Month 2 Month 3 Month 4 Month 5 Month 6 Month 7 Month 8
Persona A Control Persona A Rule 1 Persona A Rule 2
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Evaluating Success of
Personalization Rules • Key question – does a given personalization rule
increase or decrease business outcomes for a specific persona?
• You need to establish a baseline for each persona
• Custom queries can help you answer this question; the upcoming release of OLAP capabilities will make this simpler
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Personalization is not always the answer
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Three Times You Don’t Need
Personalization You are generating lots of names for sales – but few qualified leads:
• Engagement Plan and Lead Scoring
Conversion rates are very low and you don’t know why:
• A|B or Multivariate Testing
You don’t understand your visitors or you can’t measure the success of the personalization rules you make:
• Engagement Analytics
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REAL WORLD IMPLEMENTATION
CONSIDERATIONS
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2 key implementation
considerations
• Start simple, and stay tightly focused on
highest value campaigns
• Be strategic as your users evolve from
strangers to real people
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Keep it simple
Strategic planning Rules management Content variations
Measurement mechanisms
Quality assurance Analyze & optimize Impact on build
Content profiling
Strategic planning Rules management Content variations
Measurement mechanisms
Quality assurance Analyze & optimize Impact on build
Content profiling Strategic planning Rules management Content variations
Measurement mechanisms
Quality assurance Analyze & optimize Impact on build
Content profiling Strategic planning Rules management Content variations
Measurement mechanisms
Quality assurance Analyze & optimize Impact on build
Content profiling Strategic planning Rules management Content variations
Measurement mechanisms
Quality assurance Analyze & optimize Impact on build
Content profiling
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
What’s manageable?
• Personalization is complex
– Needs marketing attention, time, energy and
dollars
• You have a good chance at early success
if you:
– Begin simply and target an important
objective
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
A simple example
• Establish a baseline so you can measure
success
• Select a discrete, important goal and
segment
– Corporate priority is increased membership.
– “We would like more beginner kite-flyers in
Nevada to join our Kite Flyers Association.”
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
A simple example
• Identify where in the buying cycle
personalization will be most effective
– Inspect profiled content and your buying cycle
– Start with just a few components
– Document your personalization plan
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A simple example
• Beginner kite flyers in Nevada:
– Geo-IP lookup
– Browsing behaviour focused on content targeted to beginners.
• “How to fly a kite”
• “Different types of kites”
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Best positioned to
influence…
Basic Information Gathering
Detailed Information Gathering
Narrowing Scope
Validating Understanding
Selecting a Contender
Negotiating Close
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A couple of good ideas…
• “Interested in learning more about kite-
flying?” message in the right-hand rail,
promoting membership benefits
• A personalized “Join Now” call to action
displayed in the header, promoting local
Nevada chapters
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Analyze and optimize
• Evaluate membership conversions against
baseline
• Use DMS goals to determine success of a
rule
• Eliminate rules that are not effective
• Examine behaviours and clickstream of
visits resulting in conversion
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Content architecture matters
Be strategic
• Plan for growth and multiple campaigns
• Understand how components will be re-used across the
site
• Plan for WHO will create and maintain both the rules and
variations
• Consider where and how the variations will be stored
• Multiple ways to approach this - do not underestimate.
– Talk to your architectural team early, and often.
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Be strategic as your users evolve
from strangers to real people
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
We were all strangers,
once…
Anonymous visitor
Building a profile
Conversion to known user
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One view of the customer
• Implicit: beginner kite flyer from Nevada
who searched for “kite flying lessons”
• Explicit: association member
member Name Age
Gende
r
Skill
level
Groups
Interests
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
The opportunity
• Leverage known user characteristics (by extending the user profile) and…
• Actions that continue to be taken on the site – increase of engagement value or specific conversions
– pattern matching to multiple personas
Where user profile “skill level” field is equal to “intermediate”
And where the Engagement Value Points is greater than 200
And where the current visit matches the “Mike” pattern card in the “Personas” profile
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
The challenge
• One user profile
• (Potentially) multiple browsing sessions
• Achieving “one view of the customer” can
be difficult
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The challenge
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Some suggestions
• Do your visitors spend significant time logged in?
– Place a value on browsing behavior that occurs anonymously vs. not
• Consider limiting your personalization rules to what is known within one session
• Consider updating the user profile explicitly with behavioural characteristics as they become known
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Don’t be creepy
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Don’t be “that guy”
• Play it cool
• Don’t move too fast
• Nobody likes a stalker
• A two-way conversation
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
Be careful of assumptions
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
• ~40 Sitecore deployments
• 150+ CMS deployments
• 2 Sitecore MVPs
• Multiple Sitecore site of the year winners
• 80+ team members in offices across the US, Canada and Brazil
• Our strategic services team has been helping clients execute DMS-type campaigns since 1999
Amsterdam Las Vegas Melbourne
QUESTIONS AND (IDEALLY)
ANSWERS
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Feedback Appreciated!
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