Actionable Marketing Advice

15 Website Personalization and Recommendations Software Tools

These website personalisation tools enable you to segment visitors and then deliver personalised messages within containers as with the classic Amazon personalized recommendations – read their published methodology from this fascinating whitepaper from 2003.

Personalization integrated with web analytics

  • Coremetrics Intelligent Offer IBM Coremetrics is widely used by retailers for analytics – and increasingly personalization for cross and up-selling.
  • Adobe Test and Target One of the best established personalization engines evolving from the original Touch Clarity back in 2004.
  • BT Buckets Lower cost option that integrates with Google Analytics.

Independent personalization engines

Personalization of customer service

  • eStara from atg eStara Click to Call and Click to Chat engage visitors proactively and selectively offer them the opportunity to contact a live agent from any page on any Web site, whether powered by the ATG platform or not.

E-Commerce Personalization Software as Service (SaaS)

The final category we review here is specifically for  E-Commerce merchandising giving automated product placements using aggregated behavioral data (those that viewed this, also viewed that) and personal recommendations (you previously bought this and might like that).

I’m indebted to an anonymous contributor who has recently reviewed and recommended these for a client. Let me know if you want me to put you in touch. He says: “The following offer enterprise level SaaS solutions to deliver increased sales and a better customer experience“.

Personalisation features available as part of CMS or Commerce management systems

This category wasn’t mentioned in the original post since personalisation features were limited when the post was originally written in 2010, but I have updated in line with a suggestion in the comments.

According to the comment from Damien of Digicon, both Sitecore and Kentico have built in tools to personalise content based on various rules, such as geo-location, search terms, referrers, lead scores and also provide more advanced personalisation based on user behaviour and profiles.

Magento also has personalisation extensions available in Magento Connect.

Thanks for all the comments sharing options in the post so far, please share others you recommend to build this list.

This entry was posted in Product page optimisation, Web personalisation. Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://www.trinityinsight.com Craig @ eCommerce Optimization

    Great article. Really helpful. Its tough navigating the solution landscape as it relates to personalization tools. Whats really difficult is the fact that all of these tools likely use Javascript in deploying their content and this can really slow a site down with multiple Http calls. hopefully in the next year or so, new technologies get created to alleviate this problem.

  • Steve D

    Personyze.com have a terrific tool that’s laser focused on personalization.
    I would love to see a review on them as well.

  • http://twitter.com/pbroadbery philip broadbery

    Hi, it might be worth a section for CMS tools. Sitecore and SDL (through there FredHopper purchase) have tools which can be applied to content including product selection. The ability to profile all content and build up patterns based on all visitor activity is very effective for dynamic personalisation, including recommendations.

    • http://www.smartinsights.com/ Dave Chaffey

      Thanks for your comment Philip (and on Twitter), that’s a great suggestion.
      We’ll look to add that, but it probably needs a specialist on these tools – I did ask someone to add to this, but they didn’t make it. Could you recommend anyone?
      Cheers, Dave

  • Janine

    The SaaS software services seem very US focussed apart from Avail. Here in the UK the market leaders are an outfit called Peerius. I used them at Arcadia and no US equivalent quite seemed to get merchandising the way they did…just my two pennies.

  • jenlaw

    Epi Server CMS latest version also has a personalisation rules engine that we are just about to upgrade to.

    • http://www.smartinsights.com/ Dave Chaffey

      Thanks for adding this Jen – will be good to get that in place.

      Dave

  • Janne Pamsgaard

    You should take a look at http://www.monoloop.com – I have found their platform to be easy to implement and use with predefined dynamic content elements. Their approach to extend the visitor profile requires no coding skills at all. Recommend that you take a look.

  • Pingback: ClerksWell’s Personalisation Guide in Smart Insights | foundation.clerkswell.com

  • http://mattrhysdavies.com Matt Rhys-Davies

    I know I’m joining the party a little late here, but am curious – are these all based on clickstream data? Or do they pull in data from other data points?

    • http://www.smartinsights.com/ Dave Chaffey

      Hi Matt, that’s right, they use referrer keywords, pages visited from analytics, but can also link to customer sales profiles so based on their interest categories.

  • Damien

    Both Sitecore and Kentico have built in tools to personalise content based on various rules, such as geo-location, search terms, referrers, lead scores and also provide more advanced personalisation based on user behaviour and profiles. Our company works with both platforms

    • http://www.smartinsights.com/ Dave Chaffey

      Thank you for the suggestion Damien, I have updated the post to include this category and will look at doing a full update.

      Dave

  • sealeyd

    Throw in a couple of additional vendors for consideration:

    Baynote – Product recommendation engine
    Webtrends Optimise – Similar to test and target with a user friendly interface
    Monetate – Simple to use MVT and AB testing tool
    Endeca – Personalised search results

    Product recommendation engines are a funny set of tools as some are based around the product (e.g. you are viewing product A, therefore you may like B) whereas the more sophisticated products optimise based on customer profile (e.g. we know you are a female therefore we recommend product c).

    • http://www.smartinsights.com/ Dave Chaffey

      Thank you for sharing these too David. I think we need a Gartner Magic Quadrant to rate these now – these 4 are large/enterprise level, many in my original post are for smaller sites too.

  • LJ

    One I cannot see mentioned here is Cognesia. They have worked across a broad range of different sized businesses and sites for a number of years. http://www.cognesia.com

  • http://www.smartinsights.com/ Dave Chaffey

    And some more recommendations #ecomchat: http://ecomchat.org/

    According to Dan Barker, other options are: Peerius, PredictiveIntent, Barilliance, RichRelevance let you ‘pseudo-personalise’ product recommendations.

    Then there’s QuBit

  • Otto Ringborg

    Innometrics has avery powerful suite including personalization capabilities http://innometrics.com/product/personalization

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