Web Personalization for E-Marketing Intelligence

Abstract

As the Web is growing exponentially, online marketing has been changed by the newly provided technological capacities and digital channels of sales. Online marketing or e-marketing is the adaptation and development of marketing strategies in the Web environment and includes all factors that affect a Web site’s efficiency, like the idea, the content, the structure, the interface, the implementation, the maintenance, the promotion and the advertising. Since more and more businesses are using the Web to conduct their activities, issues like interface usability, easy navigation and effective supporting services become critical and influence their success dramatically. However, one important problem that arises is that Web users are confronted with too many options. Currently, Web personalization is the most promising approach to alleviate this information overload and to provide users with tailored experiences. It improves user interaction with Web sites and offers them the ability to establish long-term and loyal relationships. The scope of this chapter is to give a comprehensive overview of research issues on personalized e-marketing applications. We focus on the importance of personalization as a remedy for the negative effects of the traditional “one-size-fits-all” approach. Next, we explore the different steps of the personalization process providing information about interesting research initiatives and representative commercial tools for producing personalized Web experiences. Finally, we demonstrate the close relation between personalization and Web mining and discuss open research issues.