Do customers want to customise your site?
Have you ever added a custom tool bar on your office set up? Have your non-techy friends and family changed the background image on their desktop or changed their screen saver. Is there a demand for customisation?
So here’s the question. Do people really want to make your homepage look the way they want it to? Is there a demand for iGoogle and netvibes customisation? They look cool and are attractive to the geeks in us, but do they have mass market appeal? Is there any research out there on the take up of user customisation?
“…back when Windows 95 was released, users could easily change My computer to something more personal. Apple users had been able to do this for many years, and many of them did name their computers. But few Windows users took the opportunity to do this, suggesting that they saw the computer as more of a tool than something with which they wanted to have a personalized relationship.” (David Malouf)
Just because we can doesn’t mean that we should. When you log into your bank account it could look like netvibes, complete with BBC news feeds and YouTube videos (you decide what you want). But should it?
Why should your customers see your website as something to have a personalized relationship with, especially if you don’t engage them with a personal relationship throguh your other channels?
Marc – BBC’s lead UX guy claims 68% of their users customized their home pages after the widget based redesign last year – http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/03/bbc_ux_20.html
Personalization in enterprises seems to be a different game altogether – Some interesting survey results here – http://www.surveymonkey.com/Report.asp?U=295751548035
The idea of segmentation as opposed to mere personalization seems to be a nice idea as well – http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_personalisation/index.html
Ummm… you cannot use extreme examples to prove a point. The level of customisation on a banking site might just be about whether you want it to remember you, or a stock ticker or different charting tools. I dont think they will offer “Youtube” widget there. iGoogle might not be to everyone’s cup of tea, but it works nicely for those who care.
And talking about personal relationships, am I the only one who gets puts off by the NatWest ads ? You know the ones where an advisor chats away with everyone about their upcoming holidays, babies and marriages. Its so cringeworthy and awful. Personal relationships from service providers doesnt mean being your best buddy rather its about treating the customer as a person who has personal needs. Customization is actually a way for service providers to say that they care about a customer’s individual needs.
[…] Do customers want to customise your site? #ergonomics Interesting snippet here on ‘customisation’…I’m reminded of something that was discussed at #experienceservicedesign, I think by Nico Morelli, which was that customisation is not co-design or participatory design, because it is only allowing user to affect parameters that have been considered by the designer already. Thus I would supplement the argument of this post with the further question – should customer’s be able to customise or completely create their relationship with your product, website or brand? What would the difference be? […]
[…] Do customers want to customise your site? Interesting snippet here on ‘customisation’…I’m reminded of something that was discussed at #experienceservicedesign, I think by Nico Morelli, which was that customisation is not co-design or participatory design, because it is only allowing user to affect parameters that have been considered by the designer already. Thus I would supplement the argument of this post with the further question – should customer’s be able to customise or completely create their relationship with your product, website or brand? What would the difference be? #ergonomics […]
[…] Do customers want to customise your site? Interesting snippet here on ‘customisation’…I’m reminded of something that was discussed at #experienceservicedesign, I think by Nico Morelli, which was that customisation is not co-design or participatory design, because it is only allowing user to affect parameters that have been considered by the designer already. Thus I would supplement the argument of this post with the further question – should customer’s be able to customise or completely create their relationship with your product, website or brand? What would the difference be? #ergonomics […]
is the wrong way of looking at design. When dealing with a large audience, usually socio culutral differences, it becomes difficult to keep everyone happy. Especially with information portals who need to attract and retain users, it becomes almost critical that personalization features be built into the product. For all its supposedly super functional interface Gmail had to introduce themes and widgets.
Its also creates a viral appeal amongst people. I personally ran a social network where I allowed people to customize their profile pages and also added an incentive saying, if their design was really good and appealing, it would be added into the default set of design templates. A whole bunch of people were now experimenting with color, images etc. I guess the same argument holds for the Iphone store. For a bank website, the purpose of which is very functional, you would not require a personalized interface, but for portals, aggregation sites etc it makes a lot of sense.
Funny thought: I hate having to deal with different interfaces when I use my ATM card in different machines. If I could personalize the experience and expect the consistent interface and interaction procedures, it would be solving a very important problem.
My bank asks me for my
User Name
Password1
Then Password2
If I could customize the size so it displayed an image before asking for my 2nd password, I may be at less risk from a fake website pretending to be my bank.
On my bank, I like to be able to set witch account it displays the transactions for first but not match more.