Cross-Website Personalization: Will It Happen?
During my travels around the Internet, there have been a couple occasions where I have been asked if I wanted to use Facebook Connect with a website:
Facebook Connect is a way to “take your online identity with you all over the Web.” It’s an example of websites sharing data with each other to enhance the user experience with each Web property.
Could this concept work in an online shopping context? Particularly for personalization?
Last summer, Amazon introduced Checkout by Amazon. Using IP-recognition, Checkout by Amazon allows retailers to provide Amazon’s over-81 Million customers the option to checkout with 1-Click using their Amazon account information. Like PayPal and Google Checkout, Checkout by Amazon is a way for customers to retain their privacy and checkout faster. But with Checkout by Amazon, retailers can also show Amazon cross-sells and up-sells to earn affiliate commissions.
But what if Amazon started sharing what it knows about a customer’s browsing habits and purchase history with other retailers to better personalize the shopping experience? When an Amazon customer lands on your site, your personalization tool would connect with Amazon to show cross-sells based on past history. Example: customer bought Sony Playstation, you’d serve up Playstation accessories and games, rather than other console brands on the home page.
- Customer wins: better personalized shopping experiences on external sites
- Retailer wins: better merchandizing ability to new shoppers
- Amazon wins: Amazon could offer subscriptions to its service for retailers (you don’t think Amazon would do this for free, do you?)
Of course privacy is a concern, so it would be opt in like Facebook Connect:
“Would you like to connect [Online Retailer] with your Amazon Account for a more personalized shopping experience?”
(Buttons) YES, Connect Me / NO, Thank You / Tell Me More
By proceeding, you are agreeing to Amazon Connect Terms of Use. By using [Online Retailer], you also agree to the [Online Retailer] Terms of Service.
Logged in as Linda Bustos (Not you?)
The idea is not “here’s something that Amazon could/should do.” Rather, I ask the question – what are the opportunities now and in the future for personalization — will there be sharing of information between businesses? Will web users embrace such sharing?
What do you think?
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I think the whole idea behind website personalization stems from the fact that people in general place a great stake in appearance and first impressions. If the website is personalized for them, it will obviously be appealing. This might subconsciously lead to increased conversion if it could be applied to online shopping. Psychological studies on the matter could be very interesting and informative.
Yes, I believe it will happen as more and more people are using same identity across website such as mybloglog.
One thing missing in the example is a link to a privacy policy. Especially where two websites are involved, the privacy policy for signing into this specific service should be clear. Maybe “Terms of Service” would cover that, but I think a link specific to privacy should accompany it and direct the visitor specifically to that information.
This will combine great with social, so that when I am on Netflix or Amazon, my browser’s “social tool bar” will show who else rated the movie or book highly — and their reviews would show first. Kind of like bringing your friends with you while you browse. Eventually, people will be compensated for their network’s activities.
I’ve already been using small plug-ins to pull data from facebook into websites, but to be honest it has been done largely as a gimmick.
Whilst I’m sure the idea is good on the face of it offering a more personal choice, I do find myself wondering if it gives to much power to the retailer, since such a system relies on cross compatibility, which would most likely be provided by one provider & that is an area I feel is dangerous for consumers as it is limiting choice (whilst creating the illusion of greater choice).
Regards
Craig
I think this is already starting to happen as third party shopping and social shopping sites drive people to retailers through recommendations. The driver of any feature is always value and there’s no doubt (or lack of evidence) that personalized recommendations create big value. The barrier is of course privacy both in the form of legitimate concern over profiling gone too far as well as some hype. As both get addressed I see companies opening up, giving a better experience but also evolving in how they notify and optin and out.
This is a big idea – though I am not sure retailers would agree to sharing data, with anyone. Sure, they’d agree to using a data from others, but not giving away their data.
Unless… (this is pure speculation)
a) A big retailer drives this (like Amazon)
b) Someone/some company figures out a way to price this type of information and create a market where information can be sold and purchased. The equivalent of Jigsaw but on a much bigger scale.
Exciting stuff.
@Xavier:
“This is a big idea – though I am not sure retailers would agree to sharing data, with anyone. Sure, they’d agree to using a data from others, but not giving away their data.”
Google analytics? :)
This sounds a lot like the beginning of a semantic web. However, as good as consolidating online identity across multiple sites sounds to me, I think the security issues are a huge deal for me. Not just for identity theft but for spamming potential as well.
@Dan
I don’t think Google analytics is indicative of anything because the data shared for their benchmarking is anonymized.
By the way Fireclick had the first data benchmarking service in 2003 (the Fireclick Index http://index.fireclick.com), and I remember at the time that retailers would only participate under the condition that their names would not be revealed as part of the index. Goes to show how paranoid companies can be. That was 2003 however and things might have changed.