UX in the Age of Personalization

If you listened to episode 180 of The Big Web Show, you heard two key themes: 1) personalization is now woven into much of the fabric of our digital technology, and 2) designers need to be much more involved in its creation and deployment. In my previous article we took a broad look at the first topic: the practice of harvesting user data to personalize web content, including the rewards (this website gets me!) and risks (creepy!). In this piece, we will take a more detailed look at the UX practitioner’s emerging role in personalization design: from influencing technology selection, to data modeling, to page-level implementation. And it’s high time we did.

A call to arms#section2

Just as UX people took up the torch around content strategy years ago, there is a watershed moment quickly approaching for personalization strategy. Simply put, the technology in this space is far outpacing the design practice. For example, while “personalized” emails have been around forever (“Dear COOLIN, …”), it’s now estimated that some 45% of organizations [PDF] have attempted to personalize their homepage. If that scares you, it should: the same report indicated that fewer than a third think it’s actually working.

As Jeff MacIntyre points out, “personalization failures are typically design failures.” Indeed, many personalization programs are still driven primarily out of marketing and IT departments, a holdover from the legacy of the inbound, “creepy” targeted ad. Fixing that model will require the same paradigm shift we’ve used to tackle other challenges in our field: intentionally moving design “upstream,” in this case to technology selection, data collection, and page-level implementation.

That’s where you come in. In fact, if you’re anything like me, you’ve been doing this, quietly, already. Here are just a few examples of UX-specific tasks I’ve completed on recent design projects that had personalization aspects:

• aligning personalization to the core content strategy;
• working with the marketing team to understand goals and objectives;
• identifying user segments (personas) that may benefit from personalized content;
• drafting personalization use cases;
• assisting the technical team with product selection;
• helping to define the user data model, including first- and third-party sources;
• wireframing personalized components in the information architecture;
• taking inventory of existing content to repurpose for personalization;
• writing or editing new personalized copy;
• working with the design team to create personalized images;
• developing a personalization editorial calendar and governance model;
• helping to set up and monitor results from a personalization pilot;
• partnering with the analytics team to make iterative improvements;
• being a voice for the personalization program’s ethical standards;
• and monitoring customer feedback to make sure people aren’t freaking the f* out.

Sound familiar? Many of these are simply variants on the same, user-centered tactics you’ve relied on for years. The difference now is that personalization creates a “third dimension” of complexity relative to audience and content. We’ll define that complexity further in two parts: technical design and information design. (We should note again that the focus of this article is personalizing web content, although many of the same principles also apply to email and native applications.)

Part 1: Personalization technical design#section3

Influencing technology decisions#section4

When clients or internal stakeholders come to you with a desire to “do personalization,” the first thing to ask is what does that mean. As you’ve likely noticed, the technology landscape has now matured to the point where you can “personalize” a digital experience based on just about anything, from basic geolocation to complex machine learning algorithms. What’s more, such features are increasingly baked into your own CMS or readily available from third-party plugins (see chart below). So defining what personalization is—and isn’t—is a critical first step.

To accomplish this, I suggest asking two questions: 1) What data can you ethically collect on your users, and 2) which tactics best complement this data. Some capabilities may already exist in your current systems; some you may need to build into your future technology roadmap. The following is by no means an exhaustive list but highlights a few of the popular tactics out there today, and tools that support them:

As you can see, the best tactic(s) can vary dramatically based on your audience and how they interact with you. For example, if you’re a high-volume, B2C ecommerce site, you may have enough click-stream data to support useful personalized product recommendations. Conversely, if you’re a B2B business with a qualified lead model and fewer unique visitors, you may be better served by third-party data to help you tailor your message based on industry type (NAICS code) or geography. To help illustrate this idea, let’s do a quick mapping of tactics relative to visitor volume and session time:

The good news here is that you needn’t have a massive data platform in place; you can begin to build audience profiles simply by asking users to self-identify via quizzes or profile info. But in either scenario, your goal is the same: help guide the technology decision toward a personalization approach that provides actual value to your audience, not “because we can.”

Part 2: Personalization information design#section5

Personalization deliverables#section6

Once you have a sense of the technical possibilities, it’s time to determine how the personalized experience will look. Let’s pretend we’re designing for a venture several of you inquired about in my previous article: Reindeer Hugs International. As the name implies, this is a nonprofit that provides hugs to reindeer. RHI recently set new business goals and wants to personalize the website to help achieve them.

To address this goal, we propose four UX-specific deliverables:

1. segments worksheet;
2. campaigns worksheet;
3. personalization wireframes;
4. and personalization copy deck.

Following the technical model we discussed earlier, the first thing we do is define our audience based on existing site interaction patterns. We discover that RHI doesn’t get a ton of organic traffic, but they do have a reasonably active set of authenticated users (existing members) as well as some paid social media campaigns. Working with the marketing team, we propose personalizing the site for three high-potential segments, as follows:

Segments worksheet#section7

Next, let’s determine the specific value we could add for these segments when they come to the site. To do this, we’ll revisit a model that we looked at previously for the four personalization content types. This will help us organize the collective content or “campaign” we show each segment based on a specific personalization goal:

For example, current members who are logged in might benefit from a “Make Easier” campaign of links to members-only content. Conversely, each of our three segments could benefit from a personalized “Cross-Sell” campaign to help generate awareness. Let’s capture our ideas like this:

Campaigns worksheet#section8

Personalization wireframes#section9

Now let’s decide where on the site we want to run these personalized campaigns. This isn’t too dissimilar from the work you already do around templates and components, with the addition that we can now have personalized zones. You can think of these as blocks where the CMS (or third-party plugin) will be running a series of calculations to determine the user segment in real-time (or based on a previously cached profile). To get the most coverage, these are typically dropped in at the template level. Here are examples for our home page template and interior page template:

Everything in white is the non-personalized, or “static,” content, which never changes, regardless of who you are. The personalized zones themselves (color-coded based on our content model) will also have an underlying default or canonical content set that appears if the system doesn’t get a personalized match. (Note: this is also the version of the content that is typically indexed by search engines.)

As you can see, an important rule of thumb is to personalize around the main content, not the entire page. There are a variety of reasons for this, including the risk of getting the audience wrong, effects on search indexing, and what’s known as the infinite content problem, i.e., can you realistically create content for every single audience on every single component? (Hint: no.)

OK, we’re getting close! Finally, let’s look at what specifically we want the system to show in these slots. Based on our campaigns worksheet, we know how many permutations of content we need. We sit down with the creative team to design our targeted messages, including the copy, images, and calls to action. Here’s what the capital campaign (the blue zone) might look like for our three audiences:

Personalization copy deck#section10

Reindeer Hugs International: Capital Campaign (Cross-Sell)

Element	Definition	Asset
Message A: Current Member	Headline: Take Your Hugs to the Next Level Copy: You’re a hugging expert. But did you know you could hug two reindeers at once? Primary CTA: Sign up for our Two-for-One Hugs Secondary CTA: Learn More	Source: Current-Member.jpg Full-size render: 900×450 Thumbnail render: 300×200
Message B: Real Men Hug	Headline: Real Men Hug Reindeer Copy: Are you a real man? Primary CTA: Prove It Secondary CTA: [None]	Source: Man-Hug.jpg Full-size render: 900×450 Thumbnail render: 300×200
Message C: Parents with Young Kids	Headline: Looking for a fun activity to do with the kids? Copy: Reindeer hugs are 100% kid-friendly and 200% environmentally-friendly. Primary CTA: Shop Our Family Plan Secondary CTA: Learn More	Source: Parents-Kids.jpg Full-size render: 900×450 Thumbnail render: 300×200

That’s a pretty good start. We would want to follow a similar approach to detail our other three content campaigns, including alerts (e.g., hugs needed in your area), make easier (e.g., member shortcuts), and enrichment content (e.g., blog articles on latest reindeer fashions). When all the campaigns are up and running, we might expect the homepage to look something like this when seen by two different audiences, simultaneously, in real-time, in different browser sessions:

Part 3: Advanced personalization techniques#section11

Digital Experience Platforms#section12

Of course, all of that work was fairly manual. If you are lucky enough to be working with an advanced DMP (Data Management Platform) or integrated DXP (Digital Experience Platform) then you have even more possibilities at your disposal. For example, machine learning and behavior profiling can help you discover segments over time that you might never have dreamed of (the study we referenced earlier showed that 26% of marketing programs have tried some form of algorithmic one-to-one approach; 68% still use rules-based targeting to segments). This can be enhanced via parametric scoring, where actioning off of multiple data inputs can help you create blends of audience types (in our example, a thirty-three-year-old dad might get 60 percent Parent and 40 percent Real Man … or whatever). Likewise, on the content side, content scoring can help you deliver more nuanced content. (For example, we might tag an article with 20 percent Reindeer Advocacy and 80 percent Hug Best Practices.) Platforms like Sitecore can even illustrate these metrics, like in this example of a pattern card:

Cult of the complex#section13

While all of that is super cool, even the most tech-savvy among us will benefit from starting out “simple,” lest you fall prey to the cult of the complex. The manual process of identifying your target audience and use cases, for example, is foundational to building an extensible personalization program, regardless of your tech stack. At a minimum, this approach will help you get buy-in from your team and organization vs. just telling everyone the site will be personalized in a “black box” somewhere. And even with the best-in-class products, I have yet to find seamless “one-click” personalization, where the system somehow magically does everything from finding audiences to pumping out content, all in real time. We’ll get there one day, perhaps.

But, in the meantime, it’s up to you.