• October 14, 2003

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," said research director Matthew Berk in a press release. "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."