The Official Fluid Blog

Social Design Principle #3 – Appeal to the Unique Individual

Social Design can recommend products in a smarter, more relevant way that appeals to your customers’ unique individuality.  It is more powerful to present a customized list of items “We think YOU will like…” rather than simply presenting “Related Items.”

Previously we discussed the value of customer reviews as a source of unbiased product information, but in some cases they may be puzzling or less useful to customers. Reviews may have less value when shopping for certain types of products. Books, movies, clothes, and shoes are often reviewed based solely on personal preference. While one person may love a movie, another may hate it.  With this in mind, how do customers find or know what is relevant to them?  Making better connections between customers and products requires a better recommendation system to identify items that will appeal to the unique individual:

1. Personalize the Recommendation– Present recommendations in a context relevant to the individual, and they will be more likely to engage with your products.
2. Build Customer Reputation – Encourage participation by allowing customers to earn a reputation for themselves in the context of the rest of the community.
3. Give users a “Me” page –Give customers a unique space dedicated to content meaningful to their shopping habits. This can be a valuable tool and help inform purchasing decisions.

Personalize the Recommendation

Movie reviews are often based on personal preferences and may not always be meaningful to a customer. Just because customer A likes or dislikes a movie does not mean that customer B will feel the same way.  Netflix.com addresses this relevancy problem using a “Percent Like You” feature and their “Movies You’ll Love” tab.

The “Movies You’ll Love” tab provides movie recommendations based on star ratings a customer has given to movies they have seen previously. While on the site, the system regularly reminds customers to rate more movies if they want better, more accurate recommendations.  The design effectively engages customer interest, because it reinforces the value customers get in return for rating movies.

Encourage Reputation

Amazon.com utilizes their customer reviews to integrate a reputation system where the community can appraise and monitor itself.  Customers rate individual reviews as “helpful” or “not helpful”, and the site then presents the most helpful reviews first. Top quality reviews are further sorted according to the number of reviews an individual has contributed. This system encourages passionate customers to contribute many high quality reviews.

Yelp.com takes Amazon’s reputation system to the next level by encouraging reputation building. Instead of “useful” or “not useful”, Yelp’s rating criteria are ‘useful,’ ‘funny,’ and ‘cool.’  People visiting the site can even add a reviewer to their favorites list, befriend them, become a fan, or compliment them.  Building relationships through reputation systems encourages unique identity, high quality, repeat visits, and increased participation.

Give users a “Me” page

A “me” page specifically tailored to your customers’ activities on your site is a resource and channel to provide meaningful information presented in the context of the products and activities the products support.  It is like a personalized profile in the context and for the purpose of  shopping.

Amazon.com incorporates the successful use of a “me” page.  A customer’s Amazon.com page is a central repository for everything specifically pertaining to that customer’s unique shopping habits.  From there, they can find all of their past purchases, account information, lists, communities, recommendations, most frequent search results, and on-site contributions.

Incorporating personal relevancy into the site design adds personalized value to products and services, and has the potential to create a community dynamic.  Designing for unique individuals increases the likelihood that customers will participate on your site and be less likely to abandon or fall off.  They will feel compelled to make contributions if they understand the value of increasingly personalized recommendations, and those recommendations in turn will help facilitate purchases and increase active participation and return visits.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 10:25 am and is filed under E-Commerce, Online Retail / Interactive Merchandising, Social Shopping, User Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.