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Come In. I've Been Expecting You
By Jim Sterne
Cheap personalization tools
make every site visitor feel like an audience of one
When I go to the football stadium, I am one of tens of thousands
of sports fans. When I go to the theater, I am one of hundreds
of arts patrons. When I watch television, I am one of three
or four family members. When I surf the Internet, I am alone.
The fact that each surfer is an island plays straight to the
Internet's strengths. Dozens of software packages promise
to personalize customers' experiences online so that the world
revolves around them -- so long as they remain on your site
anyway. Install BroadVision's One-to-One Enterprise (www.broadvision.com),
and you can track your visitors' every move, learn their interests,
and serve them the ads and special offers most likely to make
their hearts go pitty pat. Net Perceptions for E-commerce
(www.netperceptions.com)
lets you perform the Amazonian feat of recommending products
based on the purchases of customers with similar tastes and
buying histories. Want an artificial-intelligence package
that understands incoming E-mail and responds to customers'
specific questions? SelectResponse from eHNC (www.ehnc.com)
is there for you.
Of course, these products require that you shell out several
million dollars for software, training, integration, and the
personnel to run it all. I'm sorry, is that a problem?
Well, you might be able to do it yourself. Perhaps you already
know how to use cookies to recognize your visitors and greet
them by name. You might even be able to hook up a database
that remembers customers' preferences and a dynamic server
that creates Web pages for them on the fly. But watch out:
you're likely to find yourself leading a team of learning-on-the-job
developers who are macramé-ing together a seriously
complex Web site with no documentation. That's not exactly
a stable foundation for your E-commerce empire.
Fortunately, you can still achieve a little pampering on the
cheap. The trick is to approach your customers as segments:
ones small enough to suggest customization but not so minuscule
that you need a bunch of software to manage them.
Mirror,
Mirror on the Web
Visitors consider a Web site "personalized" when they see
themselves there. That means you must avoid the broad brush
when addressing your audience. Say you're the owner of a dental-supply
company and Algernon K. Floom visits your site looking for
a drill. You can't afford the software that would request
from him the Algernon K. Floom story and henceforth greet
him by name ("Hello there, ALGERNON K. FLOOM!") and show him
only Algernon K. Floomtailored offers. But suppose you
present him with these options:
If
you're in private practice, click here
If
you're part of a dental co-op, click here
If
you're a hospital purchasing agent, click here
If
you're the matériel director of an HMO, click
here
This shows Algernon K. Floom that you understand that all
drill buyers are not cut from the same cloth. You recognize
that he has specific needs, and you've made an effort to address
those needs by offering information, pricing, or services
tailored to his market segment. You may not be drilling down
far, but at least you're drilling.
Another way to show customers you're trying to do something
just for them is to walk them through a series of questions
about their requirements. Suppose your company sells just
one product: an extra quiet high-speed drill that can be used
equally well by right- and left-handed dentists and is bundled
with a disposable spittoon. You could describe the drill in
just that way on your home page and invite dentists of all
stripes to click to buy. Or you could have the site lead them
through the following questions:
Do
you use your cavity drill on a daily basis or
only a couple of times a week?
Do
you use your drill with your right hand or
your left?
Do
you have your patients wear headphones or
not?
Do
you prefer your high-speed drill to include the
wrist-mounted spittoon or not?
Instead
of offering a single product description, you would then provide
several different product descriptions, each emphasizing some
combination of drill features identified as desirable by the
customer's responses. A right-handed dentist would arrive at
a page describing the drill as right-handed. (The fact that
it is equally well suited for lefties is unimportant.) Dentists
with their own stationary spittoons would read a product description
that doesn't even nod to the wrist-mounted accessory, which
you simply wouldn't ship. Suddenly, it seems as though you have
many products instead of just one, and that your sole interest
in life is making sure customers choose the product that is
best for them.
Asking questions accomplishes two things. First, as customers
click away at their options, they produce data-rich server
logs that you can squeeze for market research. Second, when
customers shape their requirements, they generally feel better
about their purchases. If someone goes into a store looking
for a digital camera and the salesclerk immediately recommends
the RX7-11, the customer suspects that that model produces
the biggest commission. But if the clerk asks questions about
why the customer wants the camera and how it will be used
and then recommends the RX7-11, the customer is comfortable
with the choice.
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