Personalizing your content

Personalization allows a portal or Web site to choose which content should appear for a particular user. The WebSphere PortalPersonalization component selects content for users, based on information in their profiles and on business rules. Using Portal Personalization, business experts can classify site visitors into segments and target relevant content to each segment.

For example, a site using Personalization might show different news articles to managers than to regular employees or different information to valued customers. Personalization offers analytic capabilities to record site usage patterns and includes the LikeMinds recommendation engine, which provides collaborative filtering capabilities. Collaborative filtering uses statistical techniques to identify groups of users with similar interests or behaviors. Inferences can be made about what a particular user might be interested in, based on the interests of the other members of the group.

You can define content through a number of applications, including IBM Lotus Web Content Management. Personalization automatically detects the content definition from these applications. Definitions of database or LDAP content types can also be made through a Personalization wizard included with IBM Rational Application Developer.

Once you define the content type, attributes of the content are exposed to the rule author. The rule author can use these attributes to make conditions which define if and when certain content is displayed, or even if certain actions like database updates and triggered e-mails may occur.

Benefits of Personalization

• The Personalization component selects content for users based on information in their profiles and on business logic. With Personalization facilities, subject matter experts can select content that is suited to the needs and interests of each site visitor. These Web-based tools help companies quickly and easily leverage content that is created by business and subject matter experts.

• Personalization classifies site visitors into segments and then targets relevant content to each segment. Business experts create the rules for classifying users and selecting content, using Web-based tools.

• Personalization has built in capabilities for the IBM Java Content Repository. This means that personalization rules can easily be used in your Web Content Management solutions.

• Personalization also includes a recommendation engine that provides collaborative filtering capabilities. Collaborative filtering uses statistical techniques to identify groups of users with similar interests or behaviors. Inferences can be made about what a particular user might be interested in, based on the interests of the other members of the group.

• Campaign management tools are also included with Personalization. Campaigns are sets of business rules that work together to accomplish a business objective.

  For example, a Human Resources manager might want to run a campaign to encourage employees to enroll in a stock purchase plan or sign up for some other new benefit which has just become available to employees. The Human Resources manager would define a set of rules that are shown to accomplish this business objective. Campaigns have start and stop dates and times and can be email and Web-page based. Several campaigns can run simultaneously and can be prioritized.

• Personalization Overview

  Portal Personalization provides automatic customization of Web site content for individual users and user groups.

• How a site is personalized

  Understanding the concepts, terminology, and process for adding Portal Personalization to a Web site or a portlet is a prerequisite to using Personalization.

• Personalization terms

  The concepts and principles for working with Portal Personalization require an understanding of terminology.

• Use rules

  Rules are used to define how your Web site interacts with individual and groups of Web site visitors. Rules are composed of easy-to-read logic statements that, in their final form, specify how to evaluate various conditions and what actions to take based on those conditions.

• An introduction to LikeMinds

  Personalization contains a dynamic recommendation system based on LikeMinds. LikeMinds is software that is used with your e-commerce applications. LikeMinds analyzes user interactions that occur on your Web site and generates real time predictions and recommendations to your Web site users.

• Feedback and analytics

  Personalization provides a complete logging framework for collecting data on how visitors are using your Web site. If Feedback is enabled, data is automatically collected about each Personalization rule that is fired. In addition, development tools enable Web sites to collect a variety of data related to visitors' actions and behavior. By default this data is logged to a standard database schema for later analysis and reporting. The framework is also extensible, allowing Web sites to customize and supplement the way data is collected and stored to more fully meet their needs.

Related concepts

Develop a personalized portlet

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