The Aviva Stadium Dublin, 21-22 November 2013

• Types of Personalisation

• Problems you can solve with Personalisation

• Some items to note – Fundamentals

• Case Study: Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS)

• Hits & Tips for delivering Personalisation

• Conclusions

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• User Interface Customisation

• Geographic (either GeoIP or set explicitly by user)

• User selection

• Login based

• Campaign based

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• Cater for International Audiences

• Increase Campaign Conversions

• Messaging to broad

• Home page trying to talk to too many audiences

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• Fundamentals of personalised website are the same as any website

• Clarity of content

• Ease of Navigation / IA

• Clarity of Message

• Simplicity is key

• If you have one “bad site” then setting up ten personalised variants will give you ten times the problem

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• Relative brand consistency

• Be in control of your content

• Clearly segment your target audiences

• Identify campaign targets (before and after personalisation)

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Component Description

Client Eastern Virginia Medical School

Design iFactory

Search Cold fusion

Personalisation Personalisation through PHP, not through Site Manager

Intranet Yes

Authentication LDAP

External System interfaces

MySQL server containing their user’s cohort structure and saved bookmarks for users

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Component Description

Project Overview

The requirement was to implement a level of personalisation on a per content basis, an updated design and a new PHP based calendar.

Key Requirements

• Certain content types needed to be visible to different users based on the user’s cohorts.

• Implementing the faculty/staff directory from the public site to this private site.

• Bookmarking functionality was to be included.

• Content types were to work across both public and private sites.

• User logs in and is authenticated through LDAP.

• Using LDAP attributes the user will be assigned a list of cohorts based on whether they’re staff, students etc. as well as what degree, and what year they’re in.

• These cohort values are stored in session variables and are used when deciding what content they can see.

• A ‘Cohorts’ element on a content type is used to restrict the

piece of content to particular users.

• PHP is then used on page request to only display content that matches the cohort level(s) of the user.

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A cohort should inherit all the access rights of its parent’s. A user may also be a member of a higher level if they are to have more generic access

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Most content on the page is personalised for the user.

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Only resources available to person logged in shown

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On page load each individual block is stacked vertically until a maximum height is reached, then a new column is started.

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Only forms relevant to person logged in will be available within search & listing

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Bookmarking can be attached to any page element. Pagination is handled by a jQuery plugin on page load.

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Personalised for each user – control panel to amend/update & tag

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My Favourites Control Panel

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Uses the PHP calendar and personalisation so only events applicable to the user are shown.

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Reuses the faculty and staff directory from the public facing website.

• Key Points

• Client can now get relevant content to users in a more efficient manner as non-relevant content won’t be seen

• Many content types can now be used between the public and private sites allowing greater reuse and flexibility

• Code Deliverables

• PHP calendar

• Personalisation on a content by content level

• Developed a pagination plug-in

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• Needs to be tied into just a few target audiences

• Otherwise just setup have a new site!

• Try to deliver that “familiar touch”

• Needs to be subtle, not “in your face”

• Need to keep it simple

• Any author can add personalized content

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• Personalisation can add value to web experience • Drive more conversions

• Deliver a more compelling story

• Generally “more useful”

• Basics still apply • Content / audiences / navigation / messages

• A bad homepage will be ten times as bad with ten personalization

variants

• A number of techniques exist • Navigational / Content driven / Geographic

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