In order to personalize well, a system must recognize and track user characteristics that enable more valuable merchandising. Systems can gather information about users either explicitly or implicitly.
An explicit setting is one in which the user actually indicates what he or she prefers.
An implicit setting is driven by user behavior and trends in that behavior, such as searching, clicking, and purchasing.
The trick to effective personalization is in closing the gap between the two settings in order to provide a great user experience. Like many of its peers in eCommerce, Amazon uses both implicit and explicit personalization to determine what a user sees. In this blog entry, we’ll explore a variety of ways Amazon has effectively closed this gap between implicit and explicit personalization.
Keeping it transparent
Research has consistently shown that consumers trust businesses more when those businesses are transparent about how personal data is used to shape their experience. It’s not a secret that there’s a growing sense of uncertainty around the ethics of tech companies keeping tabs on user behaviors as technology advances. It becomes less creepy when you realize that Amazon keeps things transparent by letting users know exactly why a product is being recommended to them and how that information is obtained.
Allowing users to modify their browsing history
While one of the first steps to creating a personalized user experience is to keep track of users’ implicit activity on your site, it’s even more critical to allow your users to not only see their past interactions but to be able to modify them as well.
An Amazon user has the ability to view and manipulate his browsing history with options to delete all viewed items, delete one item at a time, or even to turn off browsing history entirely. While a user’s browsing history is an implicit action picked up by Amazon to provide personalized product recommendations, the user is able to explicitly define specific products that should not inform the site’s personalized recommendations.
On the Your Browsing History page, a user can select to delete previously viewed items one-by-one or all at one time. The user can also select to turn off his browsing history entirely.
Helping users help themselves
Amazon’s Recommended for You page features product recommendations based on items one has ordered. The user may further personalize recommendations by checking off whether she already owns a product or is just not interested. This explicit action on the part of the user helps Amazon further tailor its recommendations.
Well, let’s say the user recently purchased a DVD as a gift.
He’ll now be getting recommendations based on a movie that he may have never watched. Amazon allows users to modify recommendations in two different places in order to mitigate the potential for irrelevant suggestions. One is by clicking the “Fix This” link next to the reason for the recommendation.
In the overlay that appears, the user can edit his purchases by selecting “This was a gift”. Alternatively, maybe the user purchased the movie and just didn’t like it. Not only can the user rate this item here, but he could simply opt to select “Don’t use for recommendations.”
Similarly, on the The Improve Your Recommendations page a user can rate purchases, identify gifts, and/or remove purchases from the list that informs recommendations, as well as undo any modifications previously applied.
Improve Your Recommendations is a secondary way to customize one's product recommendations based on recent purchases.
Like the Fix It control, these explicit corrections update the product recommendations found in the Recommended for You section, providing the user with more relevant suggestions.
Why is personalization so important?
Consumers now expect websites to personalize their experience, and that expectation has only grown stronger over time. Frustration is common when content, offers, ads, or promotions appear that have nothing to do with a visitor's actual interests. Despite this clear demand, many marketers still find real-time personalization difficult to execute well, running into obstacles that keep them from fully capturing its benefits. The takeaway hasn't changed: it's worth delivering an experience consumers not just want, but expect.
Personalized homepages, content suggestions, and product recommendations not only make users feel understood, but also significantly improve the user experience by quickly getting people what they want or need. The main things to keep in mind when implementing personalized recommendations are to:
Let your users know why a product is being recommended and/or why content is being suggested;
Provide your users with the ability to modify implicitly acquired settings; and
Help your users help you by providing the means for them to provide feedback on recommendations so that you can better refine suggestions for them.
Amazon’s combination of implicit collection and explicit correction is an interesting example of making personalization effortless while ensuring that the user still has control. While Amazon is only one example that has successfully bridged the gap between implicit and explicit settings, applying these three principles are a great step towards implementing an effective personalized experience.