Are Personalization and Customization the Same Thing?
In recent times, personalization and customization have become two of the most popular terms for marketers. However, many people use these words interchangeably without realizing that they have two different meanings. They may seem to be similar, but the implementation in our product or website will show a considerable difference between them.
While the objective of both is the same, which is primarily to enhance the features and content of a website or an app as per the individual needs of users to improve their experience, the approaches taken are different.
I will try to explain this in simple words – Let’s say you go to a cake shop and order a pastry. A customized experience would be telling the baker to put additional toppings of cherry and chocolate. Meanwhile, in a personalized user experience, the system has retained your past orders with added toppings and will serve them accordingly without you asking for them.
Difference between the two –
a. Personalization is managed by the system – System is configured in such a way that it identify users and deliver them the data, experience or features that matches their role. The personalized experience offers relevant content, such as personalized product recommendations, after analyzing the user behaviors and attributes.
b. Customization is managed by the user: Users make changes to the product/website as per their priorities and interests by rearranging the content around an interface.
Why Personalize?
There are two types of personalization: Role-based and individualized. Role-based personalization groups users based on specific characteristics, like on intranets where HR databases hold employee information. For example, only employees in the retirement plan can view their retirement account in a personalized benefits dashboard.
On the other hand, individualized personalization involves a system creating a profile of each user and presenting different information to each person based on their unique needs. Such a system uses advanced data analysis and machine learning algorithms to collect and store the user’s search and purchase history and infer personal information to create a unique experience, but it can be controversial as saved information may become outdated over time.
The objective of offering a tailored experience is to fulfill the user’s needs and interests with no extra effort by enabling the content and functionality that the user requires. The system must recognize the user’s profile and adjust the experience accordingly; hence, we can say that it is based on artificial intelligence collected by the system over time. The power of personalization is an enhanced user experience as the system does all the work.
Examples of Personalization
Personalization can be used to offer specific information, control access to certain tools, or streamline transactions and processes by retaining user details in a system. For instance, on a travel website, a person might see special offers and discounts for places they have visited in the past or recently looked up. When personalization is incorporated into the travel company’s marketing strategy, it can amplify its digital marketing efforts by offering personalized recommendations to improve the digital experiences of its customers.
In a company system, a user may be restricted from accessing a certain database while others may have access to it. In both these instances, the system took care of
personalizing access to specific information without the involvement of a human agent making changes.
Why Customize?
The main objective is to customize it to let users decide on what they want to see or how data should be arranged or displayed in the user interface. Customization works better with the assumption that users know their requirements and, hence, can control their interaction based on natural intelligence.
Customization allows users to have control over their own experience, ensuring they get customized products that are exactly what they want. This leads to greater satisfaction and more positive experiences that encourage users to do more on a website or an app in the future.
Examples of Customization
For example, customization enables users to keep track of the weather in cities other than where they currently are based, such as the weather in places they often travel to or where their friends and family live. Customization also lets users on an intranet create a list of links to pages they frequently need, and it allows them to rearrange the content on their homepage to suit their specific interests.
What to Consider When Implementing Personalization and Customization?
If you are keen on personalizing and customizing your customers’ experiences, there are some key factors that you must consider.
First and foremost, make sure that the customer data that you collect is relevant so that you can create a more personalized experience for every customer. This data should include information about purchase history, browsing history, and basic demographic information.
To do this, you will require the right tech tools to help you collect and analyze user data effectively. Ensure that you invest in tools that are up-to-date and offer all the features that aid you in gathering and analyzing the data in real time.
However, it’s not just about data collection. The focus should also be on ensuring you’re allowing your customers to share their feedback about their experience, which can be achieved by asking them upfront for feedback on a purchase or allowing them to customize certain aspects of their experience.
You must also ensure that you’re being transparent about your data collection and usage policies with customers. All customers always want to ensure that their data is being handled responsibly as they’re concerned about their privacy, so it’s crucial that you take steps to keep their data secure.
In terms of implementing customization, you must remember to strike a balance between providing enough customization options and not overwhelming customers.
While a customized experience is based on giving ample choices, you should be careful and not make the selection process so complicated that customers get confused and give up, deciding to explore other options outside your store.
Trends in This Space
‘User Experience Personalization,’ if implemented correctly, can make your product or website more powerful.
Using Push Notifications: Push notifications are trending when it comes to connecting with users anytime, anywhere, even when they are not using our product/website. It helps to keep the brand’s name fresh in users’ minds by keeping them informed about the latest happenings in the application.
Start Where the User Left: If a user is not able to finish a workflow, start it from the same point where it stopped the last time. This makes things easier as users don’t have to maintain the history of the last action taken.
Enable Geolocation: This can be one of the important features of personalization. Geolocation can help to show more focused content based on the user’s location.
Opportunities in This Area
One might experience personalization in multiple places in day-to-day life. One such example is “A very famous brand launched an app which allows users to design cartoonish avatars of themselves that can be featured as their profile picture if permitted. When you click the avatar Story, you can see a series of comic-book-like images that tell a story about your own avatar. If you have recently spoken to a friend with an avatar attached to the app, you can also see your friends pop up in your daily Story.”
Personalization and customization offer interesting possibilities in creating experience for enterprise IT products:
Users navigate applications from different perspectives. User journeys can be analyzed to create personalized and customized landing screens with key highlights, important updates, and quick navigations.
AIOps products perform a lot of automation and analytics operations. Personalized and customized reports and dashboards can be used to measure various KPIs and assess any application’s effectiveness.
The visual manifestation of the same also varies with the user’s preference. Some prefer grids, while others prefer charts. Some prefer node-edge charts, while others prefer Gantts. Such flexible customization based on customer needs can also help enhance the end-user experience significantly.
Push notifications can be used in creative ways to proactively inform users of urgent and critical observations.
Conclusion
The customers want an experience that is designed specifically for them. Generic functionality or data analysis will fail to capture their attention. Personalization or customization should be implemented to enhance user experience and not to fix a broken user experience design (UX design). Personalization is to create an experience without any effort from the customer. Customization, on the other hand, gives customers the flexibility to modify the experience intentionally. This means while the user customizes, the system learns and personalizes. The expectations from different generations vary, and as a result, we should be able to serve the best possible user experience.
So, Should You Customize or Personalize?
If you have a business that involves serving or working with customers, tailoring experiences to their specific needs will help you boost customer satisfaction. Providing the same generic experience for everyone will not help you attract potential customers or keep your current ones happy; instead, you should focus on creating experiences that will appeal to them and boost your conversion rates.
To choose between personalization and customization, you should think about the products or services you offer and what you want your e-commerce website or mobile app to achieve. This will help you determine what will work best for your business goals.
If you have recently launched your business online, then think about customizing the user experience as the first step. This is because you may not have all the expertise, tools, and data needed to provide personalized experiences to your users. But fret not; as your business grows and you gain more resources, you can invest in experience management software to provide personalized experiences in real-time. This software can help you understand customer preferences, offer tailored recommendations, improve overall customer satisfaction, and get more loyal customers.
