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Personalization, also known as customization, consists of tailoring a service or a product to accommodate specific individuals, as opposed to general groups. A wide variety of organizations use personalization to improve customer satisfaction, as well as for advertising. Personalization is a key element in social media and recommender systems.

Web pages[edit]

Web pages can be personalized based on the characteristics (interests, social category, context, etc.) of an individual, therefore providing them with a tailored user experience. The term customization is often used when the site only uses explicit data such as product ratings or user preferences.

Technically, web personalization can be achieved by associating a visitor segment with a predefined action. Customizing the user experience based on behavioural, contextual and technical data is proven to have a positive impact on conversion rate optimization efforts. Associated actions can range from changing the content of a webpage, presenting a pop-in or even triggering a personalized email.

According to a 2014 study from research firm Econsultancy, less than 30% of e-commerce websites have invested in the field of web personalization. However, many companies now offer services for web personalization as well as web and email recommendation systems that are based on personalization or anonymously-collected user behaviours.[1]

There are three categories of web personalizations:

  1. Behavioural
  2. Contextual
  3. Technical

There are three broad methods for web personalization:

  1. Implicit
  2. Explicit
  3. Hybrid

With implicit personalization, the web personalization is performed based on the different categories mentioned above. It can also be learned from direct interactions with the user based on implicit data, such as items purchased or pages viewed.[2] With explicit personalization, the web page (or information system) is changed by the user using the features provided by the system. Hybrid personalization combines the above two approaches to leverage the best of both worlds.

Web personalization is closely linked to the notion of Adaptive hypermedia (AH). The main difference is that the former would usually work on what is considered an "open corpus hypermedia," whilst the latter would traditionally work on "closed corpus hypermedia." However, recent research directions in the AH domain take both closed and open corpus into account. Thus, the two fields are closely inter-related.

Personalization is also being considered for use in less overtly commercial applications to improve the user experience online.[3] Internet activist Eli Pariser has documented that search engines like Google and Yahoo! News give different results to different people (even when logged out). He also points out social media site Facebook changes user's friend feeds based on what it thinks they want to see. Pariser warns that these algorithms can create a "filter bubble" that prevents people from encountering a diversity of viewpoints beyond their own, or which only presents facts which confirm their existing views.

On an intranet or B2E Enterprise Web portals, personalization is often based on user attributes such as department, functional area, or role. The term "customization" in this context refers to the ability of users to modify the page layout or specify what content should be displayed.

Digital media[edit]

Another aspect of personalization is the increasing prevalence of open data on the Web. Many companies make their data available on the Web via APIs, web services, and open data standards.[4] Ordnance Survey Open Data This data is structured to allow it to be inter-connected and re-used by third parties.[5]


Current open data standards on the Web include:

  1. Attention Profiling Mark-up Language (APML)
  2. DataPortability
  3. OpenID
  4. OpenSocial

Mobile phones[edit]


Print media[edit]

Main article: Mail merge



Promotional merchandise[edit]


Mass personalization[edit]

Mass personalization is defined as custom tailoring by a company in accordance with its end users tastes and preferences.[9] From collaborative engineering perspective, mass customization can be viewed as collaborative efforts between customers and manufacturers, who have different sets of priorities and need to jointly search for solutions that best match customers’ individual specific needs with manufacturers’ customization capabilities.[10] The main difference between mass customization and mass personalization is that customization is the ability for a company to give its customers an opportunity to create and choose product to certain specifications, but does have limits.[11] Clothing industry has also adopted the mass customization paradigm and some footwear retailers are producing mass customized shoes.[12] The gaming market is seeing personalization in the new custom controller industry. A new, and notable, company called "Experience Custom" gives customers the opportunity to order personalized gaming controllers.[13]


Behavioral targeting represents a concept that is similar to mass personalization.

Predictive personalization[edit]

Predictive personalization is defined as the ability to predict customer behavior, needs or wants - and tailor offers and communications very precisely.[15] Social data is one source of providing this predictive analysis, particularly social data that is structured. Predictive personalization is a much more recent means of personalization and can be used well to augment current personalization offerings.

Map personalization[edit]

Digital web maps are also being personalized. Google Maps change the content of the map based on previous searches and other profile information.[16] Technology writer Evgeny Morozov has criticized map personalization as a threat to public space.[17]

See also[edit]


  12. ^ "Botisto". Botisto. Retrieved 2013-01-16. 
  13. ^ "Custom Controllers". Retrieved 2014-11-20. 
  16. ^ Lardinois, Frederic. "The Next Frontier For Google Maps Is Personalization". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2015-09-13. 
  17. ^ Morozov, Evgeny (2013-05-28). "My Map or Yours?". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 2015-09-13. 

External links[edit]