Customising Your Web World

Web 2.0 - user-generated, user-centric web content - is all around us.

Some websites have been tailoring content to individual visitors for many years. Amazon.com, for example, is perhaps the best known example of showing tailored special offers to returning customers based upon their previous search history, via the use of cookies left on the computer.

However, the website currently receiving more attention than most - Facebook - has brought the world of social networking into mainstream web life, opening up the idea of customised web environments to the masses. In other words, as well as tailoring content according to visitor behaviour, sites are now allowing visitors to personalise content themselves.

Just last month the BBC re-launched its main page to enable users to tailor what they see, according to their personal preferences. iGoogle is another site offering visitors the opportunity to customise pages, with users setting preferences for what should be displayed each time they visit the website, such as news and weather forecasts in their local area.

With such heavy hitters of the online world making plays in this area, it is increasingly likely that users will come to expect thisfrom the most popular sites.

Indeed, displaying contextualised content offers businesses a range of benefits including the potential to increase revenues by displaying the most relevant content and offers and strengthening the customer relationship through a more personalised web experience.

However, there is a need to tread carefully, and a number of key
questions to consider:

• What are the business benefits to you?
• How likely are your visitors to want to be able to customise content themselves?
• Are they likely to be frequent repeat visitors, who might feel that they will gain some benefit from personalising what they see?
• How much personalised information should be displayed prior to asking the visitor to log in to the website?

Striking the right balance between offering customised web environments and helping the user stay within their comfort zone is very important to get right. In the days after the relaunch of BBC Online, internet blogs were alive with comments on the change. While many positive comments were made, there was some confusion too. For example, because the design left a lot of empty space, some users were unaware that this can be filled with customised content.

We have been conducting website usability research for many years, and still find that ease of use and simplicity are as important as they were in the early days of the internet. If customisation interferes with usability the impact could be more negative than positive.

Data security is another issue to consider. In our website research we have always seen concerns around data security but with every high profile case of lost personal data, this issue grows in importance. Linked to this, some website users show a strong reluctance for information to be stored about them through cookies, regularly deleting these from their computer. There are also worries about personal information being displayed prior to log-in, particularly if other people access their computers.

So while the expectations of the web user may well change in response to recent developments by the major online players, the perennial internet issues of simplicity and security will continue to be key.

For more information on the issues discussed please contact: Simon Duke: 0131 226 8675 or simon.duke@ipsos-mori.com