Many vendors are making solid strides in providing more sophistication to their products. The product keeps track of customers' actions over time, building a broader base of knowledge about the individual and driving proactive marketing, such as prompting new offers at the site or triggering E-mail advertising. Steve VanTassel, VP of commerce solutions at NetPerceptions, says the rules-based engine provides merchants with more options for controlling the type of content driven by collaborative filtering. The capabilities of Web-site personalization software are outstripping the abilities of companies to understand and implement the technology, given all the other challenges they face in running a quality site, says Sheryl Kingstone, a program manager at the Yankee Group. Still, Web companies don't necessarily need to use the most elaborate personalization tools to gain worthwhile benefits for their sites.
Some sites find lighter-weight personalization tools are equally effective.
Instead, BabyAge turned to ResponseLogic Inc. and its core product, Adapte. Though Kiefer won't say how much Adapte cost because his company was a ResponseLogic beta customer and received an unusual discount, he notes the product was far more affordable than the NetPerceptions tool and took only two weeks to deploy. Adapte draws on the order history of BabyAge's customers and their ZIP codes to individualize content. Interest in certain types or styles of baby products is closely tied to geographical area, Kiefer says. People in the Midwest, for example, rarely buy wooden high chairs, while customers in the West want more rugged strollers for activities such as running.