Web Metrics - Design Specifications of a Web-based System for Personalization with Bifurcation

This paper describes a personalization system aiming at one-to-one marketing with the ability to support real-time identification, selection, and content creation where the interaction is performed on a web-based e-commerce platform. The personalization system is capable of controlling and presenting the web site in different shapes to different consumers - controlled bifurcation. When combined with the tracking of the visitor's site movements, detailed consumer behavior patterns can be established. One important means has been to create a system that can later on be used in consumer behavior research. The bifurcation capability means that the system can be used to test the impact of different layouts of the web site - or of different sales offerings - in the same way direct marketing methods work. This system will be able to present different layouts of the site or offerings to randomized groups of visitors. Their responses, in the form of movements within the site, purchase frequencies, etc., can then be measured by the system.