User Experience Personalization

In addition to my day job, I occasionally do due diligence reviews for a venture capital organization that invests in early stage companies. Recently, I reviewed a startup that builds a platform for Internet-based retailers, which creates a more personalized shopping experience for its customers. It turns out that good personalization software can increase short-term sales by 10% or more, which is something that will be in demand provided it works.

This experience got me thinking about two things. First, as an industry, we are years behind retailers in our use and understanding of how to leverage the Internet to do our jobs. Second, personalization is our future.

Since I don't think I'll get much argument about the superiority of top eRetailer websites, I'll move on to talk about what personalization is and how I see it being used in a multifamily context.

As the term suggests, personalization refers to the use of tools that allow users to customize a website to meet their needs. The goal of personalization is to create a superior experience as well as engagement, one user at a time. You're probably already familiar with these types of features if you've customized the layout or color palette of a site or stored items as favorites, or on a wish list.

If you are interested in personalizing user experience, start by allowing users to add communities they are interested in to a personal favorites list. There are several ways you can set this up. Use Facebook Open Graph and let people “Like” the community, or allow them to create and maintain a list of favorites on your own site. Although in theory the latter method has the potential to drive repeat visitors, some users may be more comfortable using a Facebook platform.

I expect that many of the most effective personalization tools used by eRetailers will generate the same reaction that reviews have. In particular, I’m not sure we’re ready for recommendation engines that list other properties a renter might be interested in on your ILS page. But clearly some of the major innovations in online advertising will be the continued development of tools that personalize the user experience.