A new Jupiter Research report has revealed that only 14% of
consumers have been prompted to buy more often from online stores in
response to personalized offers or recommendations.
The study, "Beyond the Personalization Myth: Cost Effective
Alternatives to Influence Intent," also found that personalization
only leads 8% of consumers to increase their visits to content, news or
entertainment web sites.
Consumers would, however, make more online purchases or visit sites
more often if the sites themselves were improved:
54% would like to see faster-loading pages, while 52% would like to
see better navigation. "Most web site personalization projects fail
to deliver real business benefits," according to research director
Matthew Berk.. "Our industry has always assumed that a personalized
web site was a better one, both for the visitor and the site operator.
Our research has found that this is not the case."
Added senior vice president David Schatsky: "To drive key
business metrics, most sites are better off focusing on the basics, like
usability, information architecture and making key tasks easy for users
to accomplish.
(MediaPost 10/15/2003)
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