The trend towards personalization
A strong awareness of the diversity and individuality of people is a rapidly growing trend in all areas of life. Every person has different needs. Companies try to adapt their products accordingly or even have them individually configured directly by the customer. Whether it is the tailor-made mobile phone contract or the self-designed Adidas Superstar shoe, the trend towards personalization is omnipresent. The pioneer for this is the Internet. Advertising tailored to the user and suitable product suggestions have long been common practice. The adaptation of the user experience (layout, colour design, font size, etc.) of a website according to personal preferences is becoming increasingly important. The underlying term in this context is Web Personalization.
Web Personalization stands for the process of customizing a website to the individual needs of each visitor
Good service means personalization
Personalization in itself is not new. Waiters greet regular customers by name and know what their “usual order” is. Shopkeepers play on their experience to provide customers with personalized experiences – an exhausted looking couple with three children is likely to want to get what they came for and hit the road, while a single person slowly roaming the aisles may be more likely to seek an in-depth consultation. Responding to customers’ needs is the motto. In the offline world, personalization is often synonymous with good service and this is usually rewarded.
What does that mean in relation to websites?
If you address the needs of your online visitors individually, they tend to stay on your site longer and come back more often. In general, this increases user satisfaction. No matter what purpose your site serves, you want happy, satisfied users who like to be on your site and come back again.
Web Personalization begins on a small scale
How do I manage to personalize my website?
There are basically two approaches to this. On the one hand, you can build up profiles using user data that you collect and then adjust certain elements on your page according to reader behaviour. Most people know this practice from advertising banners. This may seem a bit unpopular at first glance. But if you manage to really respond to the needs of the users and thus improve the online service, this is usually not important.
The other approach we take at abilitools is to give the reader tools to be able to customize a website to his needs. Who can know better? The important thing of course is that the settings are then saved so that the user does not have to reconfigure everything the next time he visits the site.