For me relevance on a website is pretty simple: Display something meaningful to the website visitor.  Now the method of doing this can vary.  If you are coming to a site via organic search, I would expect the page you land on should be relevant to the term you searched.  Also if you are searching for an item and you get a paid search, I would expect that the person that created the ad will land  you to a page that is meaningful to the search.

But what if you are already on the site? You are browsing products, articles, images or users?  What then? How do I make a page relevant when you are defining the path you are taking and not me?

First the amount of data that can be collected is astronomical.  Every click, every entry, every closure needs to be captured and processed.  There are several companies that specialize in relevance and that is all they do.  The one reason to work with third parties is simple.  They focus on relevance, where an internal IT group tends to focus on something immediately then move along.  Relevance engines need to constantly be tweak, otherwise you’d see very poor recommendations on sites like amazon.  I really love the idea of showing products that a customer might be interested in, and that might be because they are looking at a product another customer looked at in their shopping experience, and they bought something down the path.  So why not use this information to help jump the customer to the end of their search vs. the beginning?  What if 9 out of 10 people that viewed product A ended up buying product B?  Why not get product B in front of everybody buying A.

That is just an example of relevance, but there’s plenty more where that came from.

Imagine breaking out of product recommendations and moving into article recommendations, people recommendations, but basing all of them on the simple rules of monitoring shoppers.  It can be done and should be.

More later

I love my new job, I’m doing product management for a great company with an even greater group of people.  I’m really excited to be there and they have great plans, and I’m really happy to be a part of their future growth.

I’m working on personalization/customization which currently entails relevant item selections to show customers as they shop the site.  I do think people get confused between personalization and relevant items.  While relevant items displays are part of personalization, personalization is a lot more than just simply showing people items other people bought.

I see a truly personal experience based on knowing the customer, and knowing them well.  For example it’s my daughter’s birthday in a couple of weeks.  If I could be presented on a site suggestions for her birthday when I arrive, 2 things may happen.

1. I say, “Holy Crap I need to get her a gift”
2. I shop on the site to get her a gift

Either way the site has provided me a personalize experience, and hopefully I’ll reward the site with my purchse.