March 06, 2000 New Thinking:
Getting personal
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March 06, 2000
Getting personal
By Gerry McGovern
I’ve just come from a conference on online travel where all the talk was about personalization. Like many of the words and phrases that have been used with regard to this whole Internet phenomenon, personalization has taken on a mantra-like feel.
People are using the word with an innocent cure-all expectation, as if all they have to do is add personalization to their website and lo-and-behold their site will become ‘sticky’ and everyone who visits will morph into a loyal customer.
Personalization is a great idea. However, it is something you add to a great website, not something that in itself makes a website great. Look at it this way. Before a visitor will even think of personalizing a website they will have to really like that website and feel that it delivers to them the information that they want.
I doubt very much that people personalize a website on their first visit. I would say that it is after you visit a website several times that you consider personalizing it. Why? Because you’ve been to a website. You’ve found that it has great information. However, there’s a huge amount of information there and you only want some of it. So, you personalize so that the next time you visit you are presented with a shorter route to the information you want.
There are obvious implications here that many businesses who wish to use personalization seem to miss. The desire of any visitor to personalize your website only becomes a reality when your website has lots of quality information.
Personalization in itself will not make your website sticky or turn visitors into loyal customers. It is the information you provide that has the potential to do that. Personalization is a tool that makes your information more accessible, but if you don’t have lots of quality information to start off with, all the personalization tools in the world won’t matter a damn.
I know I’m repeating myself but I have to stress again that the Internet is not about technology. The Internet is about sharing information, it’s about publishing, it’s about interaction. Far too many people are still approaching the Internet with the idea that there’s some Internet software tool-kit they can buy that will put an ‘e’ in front of everything they do.
It doesn’t work that way. Unfortunately, the Internet is like real life, like real business. Every day, businesses are finding out that customer service is not solved by email auto responders. That launching a website is only the start of the process. That getting people to visit is becoming increasingly more difficult and expensive. That if you don’t have a long-term vision of what you want your website to achieve and are willing to work through the numerous crises that occur, you haven’t got a hope.
Personalization is a great idea. But before buying some personalization tools, ask yourself this simple question: Why would someone want a personalized version of my website? Or, maybe even ask a few more rudimentary questions: Why would someone want to visit my website in the first place? Why would they want to come back?
Gerry McGovern
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