As part of our continuing discussion around Exceptional Web Experiences, we are asking some of our IBM Business Partners to share their thoughts on how to make a web experience exceptional. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic. Please comment below, or join the discussion on Facebook.com/IBMSocialBiz this week!
3 Reasons Personalization Improves Your Web Experience By Michael Porter, Principal for Portal and Social, Perficient @PorterOnPortal
Everyone wants to be treated as someone special. Don’t you get a thrill when you check in to your hotel and they thank you for the 20+ nights you’ve stayed there this year and give you a “free” upgrade? You can feel the same when you hit a web site and they show you what you want to see rather than what you don’t need. Some of my biggest pet peeves on the web revolve around complexities. Why must some web sites make it so difficult to find the information I want?
Your site doesn’t have to fall into a trap of annoying the very people you intend to serve. Software like the IBM’s WebSphere Portal provides some great tools to understand a user and personalize their experience. Here are three reasons why using Personalization can improve your web experience.
It won’t annoy your user. During interviews with a client around their employee intranet, one user told us that he really didn’t care about the employee picnic at headquarters this week since his office was 500 miles away. He probably wasn’t going to get in his car and drive there for it.
Personalization can filter the noise. During work at one retail client with employees spread throughout the United States, the store team’s biggest complaint was about the sheer amount of information available to them. If they searched on brakes for example, they would get store promotions, press releases, and other information. They really wanted things like part numbers, standard operating procedures, and even installation information.
If you take into account who the user is and what he or she does then filtering the information will improve both browse and search experiences.
Personalization improves user loyalty. One progressive healthcare insurance client uses IBM’s Portal to understand when a member has an upcoming operation. When the member next logs in, the portal provides them with information on how they can save money by using a surgical center instead of the hospital. Over the last few years, this company has seen their site usage increase dramatically.
What are other tactics that could help make a web experience exceptional? Read what others are saying on Facebook now - and mark your calendars for our moderated chat on Friday, May 18 at 11 AM ET.
I am an owl. I do not Tweet.
Thu, Apr 11th 2013 9:18a Colleen Burns Understanding your social style: I am an owl. I do not Tweet.
By Tina Williams, IBM Program Manager for Social Business Initiatives @ideasattjw
Are you reluctant to start Tweeting? Getting involved in social networks like Twitter for business use hasn’t been natural for me. In a business environment, I tend to spend a lot of time listening and learning at first . Then, when I feel confident in my understanding, I begin voicing my opinions.
I hadn’t thought much about how the w [read] Keywords: ibm
networking
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