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Nadja Vol Ochs
Developer Relations Group
Microsoft Corporation
Updated June 18, 1999
The following article was originally published in the MSDN Online Voices "Design Discussion" column.
A year ago, everybody was talking about "personalization." Great debates arose as to the value, implementation, and definition of personalization. Many wondered what value personalization would bring to a Web site. Some touted it as the new way of getting return visitors, while others shunned it as too undeveloped to make a difference. How, they asked, can the artificial intelligence of today possibly know what individual users want to see each time they visit a site?
One year later, it is hard to even find a site -- especially among portals and e-commerce sites -- that does not offer at least some degree of personalization, customization, or membership. However, these issues are often treated differently from site to site; many sites present simple customization as though it were personalization. What's the difference between personalization, customization, and membership? In this article, we'll review the meanings of these often intertwined and hard to distinguish concepts.
Personalization: User attributes, usage habits, and personal preferences that capture what the user wants from the site are gathered and stored on the server. Using Microsoft® Site Server 3.0's Personalization and Membership tools allows user-specific data to be stored in what is called the Membership Directory. This data is then used to offer users content that is relevant to their unique interests or needs. With personalization, the site controls what the user sees, based on information about the user's attributes and behaviors stored on the server.
Customization: The user is in control and is able to modify the look and feel of content offered on a site. Most portals offer this type of user modification; MSN.com 
, for example, allows users to move their local weather to the top of the page. Changing the physical location or visible appearance of a Web page can also be considered customization.
Membership: A user gives out any level of information that is stored by the site either on the server or with a client-side cookie. This information can be anything from an e-mail address to the user's name, age, sex, or place of birth.
Why personalize? Your motivation might be to create a place to which users would want to return. The idea is to provide users with the specific things they want, encouraging them to return to the site. This was the case for the Internet Start site, the predecessor of the MSN.com home site we see today. At the time, Internet Start was designed as a way to highlight business partners who were using Microsoft technology.
According to Craig Kosak, lead designer for the Internet Start pages, "a distinction between personalization and customization is useful, but [the team] didn't make decisions based on it. Promoting business partners usually took priority over customizing the layout."
Anonymity can also be an essential component of personalization. On the MSN portal, you can set your preferences on the site and still remain anonymous. For many sites -- such as My Yahoo, My Lycos, My Excite, and others -- you must first reveal information about yourself before you can take advantage of personalization features.
It is smart to provide the option for users to remain anonymous. Users appreciate visiting a site and gaining benefits from the site without having to give personal information. Personal information should be revealed only if absolutely necessary for e-commerce or beneficial transactional exchange. I feel that some sites, such as Go2Net, ask for much too much personal data before offering personalization. Consider that a good share of people will not appreciate giving up their income range, gender, birth date, etc. before gaining access to a personalized site.
In-depth personalization is still very tricky today, considering the privacy issues at hand. If a site collects any information about the user, the site must be sure to offer some type of privacy statement that guarantees the user's personal information will be protected. It is important to help raise awareness and provide a safe environment for people to provide information. Every Web citizen should be responsible for reading and implementing privacy statements. Don't give out your information unless you feel confident that the site is secure. And when designing a site, be sure if you are collecting any data that you rely on the privacy efforts organized by such companies as Truste
.
Truste is an organization charted with making the Internet a community that consumers trust and believe. Truste's goal is to provide consumers with control over their personal information, satisfy the Web publisher's business model, and address consumer anxiety over sharing personal information online. Truste also provides government regulators with demonstrable evidence that the industry can successfully self-regulate.
With the original design of MSN personalization, privacy considerations were not a defining issue in the design. The only information stored on the server was the client-side cookie and a large directory of preferences. Regardless, a privacy statement was (and still is) available to the site's users, and the large directory of personal preferences stored on the servers follows privacy guidelines.
I recently worked on an online retail site designed to take full advantage of Site Server 3.0's personalization and membership functionality. Once users became members of the site, we leveraged attributes such as their zip code to show them prices based on their location. Using the Personalization and Membership tools, we provided users with a simple membership and tracked their purchases and visits to the site. This information took us closer to what is considered true personalization. By tracking how many times the user visited the site, or what products the user purchased, we were able to present them with similar products and discounts on particular items. The server manipulated the content, even as it gathered more information about the user.
To design this site I first mocked up the page with static products in a template. We then converted the template to an Active Server Pages (ASP) file, allowing us to generate product photos, information, sale prices, etc. from the server dynamically, based on the user's personalization and membership data.
It's easy to confuse personal preferences and customization with personalization. The MSN.com personalization system simply used cookies and a large directory to store the user's preferences. The user alone controlled the UI and contents viewed. In our store the server dished up relevant products based on what the user purchased or where they visited the site. So, could this be considered personal customization?
While MSN allows you to adjust the placement of various content on the page, other sites allow you to make deeper format changes, such as changing the colors of the site. Den.net and My Lycos, for example, let users adjust their preferred home page color. Den.net also lets you set your bandwidth preferences, use of Macromedia Shockwave Flash, and preferred media format for audio and video. Adding various levels of customization to your site will affect and possibly increase the production costs in some cases. Even something as seemingly basic as offering color choices requires prototyping the site with various color options that are complimentary and usable together.
There are some things to consider when offering personalization and customization on your site. These include the number of options you give to the user, the number of pages that offer personalization or customization, and the kinds of choices given to the users.
"We found that it's best to put as much information on one page as possible. For example, we used to have the content provider selections spread among a bunch of different pages (in frames) but customers ended up missing most of them. People were much more successful making personal choices on a long, scrolling page" comments Craig.
You should also consider how to let users know about new customization or personalization features available on the site.
Craig explains how they accomplished this on the Internet Start site: "We would add new content providers as we developed business relationships with them. On Internet Start we reserved a place at the top of the page to run 'ads' for new features on the site."
Craig Kosak's team has some ideas on where they see personalization and customization potentially going in the future on Microsoft sites.
"We're hoping to do some interesting things with personalization on the Windows® Web sites. Most of them are related to online maintenance of Windows. The Web site would know about the customer's computer and their computing preferences and could help make them aware of new features, new downloads, be able to detect and repair the health of their computer, tell them when upgrades are available (and let them purchase them online), manage virus control and keep virus files updated, etc." explains Craig.
Harris Kravatz, wrote a useful Webreview.com article entitled Taking Portals Personally: A Design Review.
Nancy Winnick Cluts writes about personalization in the MSDN Online Web Workshop.
Rob Howard is a Technical Evangelist on my team. He has a great overview book entitled Site Server 3.0 Personalization and Membership.
Jakob Nielsen discusses the state of personalization one year ago.
Annette Hamilton, Executive Producer at ZDNet AnchorDesk offers Personalize Panic: Beware the Three Deadly Pitfalls.
MSDN's Robert Carter on Personalizing the MSDN Start Page.
Nadja Vol Ochs is the design consultant in Microsoft's Developer Relations Group.
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