Role changes and live session stitching

A common use case in e-commerce, especially in the fashion sector, is the optimal personalization when a user takes on different roles in the same session, e.g. when shopping not only for themselves but also for their partner or children.

In the fashion sector, user characteristics such as clothing size, gender and, if applicable, age are essential for identifying the products relevant to the current search or purchase intention. These characteristics do not change when shopping for the same person in different categories. When a female customer in the women's fashion section searches for items in size S, and then switches to the men's pullovers or children's jackets section, the target group, gender and usually size also change.

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Flexible personalization handles role changes and allows for session stitching during a single session

User-specific personalization based on demographic information, purchase history or previously clicked products cannot necessarily detect the role change. Personalization should react in real time to a changed purchase intention in the same session and immediately adapt to any role change. Just as the sales staff in a fashion store naturally do.

Modern systems such as ODOSCOPE react in real time, i.e. in less than 20 milliseconds, to every click and optimize the ongoing personalization in real time. This means that effective personalization, based on the current user's interests and settings, is played out immediately and at anytime, even for unknown or anonymous users. Such modern systems can also incorporate customer data in addition to session data if there is user recognition or a login (often this only applies to 20-40% of incoming traffic). This then provides further customer data to complete the personalization.

Generally speaking, the intentions shown in the current session (e.g. recognizable from the selected categories and filter settings) are more important at this moment than the known data history of the user. The current purchase intention may seem to come out of nowhere or not fit the created user segment, but it should also be personalized in the best possible way. Systems without dynamic real-time data activation with every click cannot do this. Systems that run on the basis of user segments for which rules are stored are also unable to cope with this use case.

Often, only product-specific personalizations are displayed: "Customers who bought X, also bought Y’". However, this ignores the person(a): if two completely different customers happen to buy the same bestseller, both will receive the same product recommendations. This is not personal, but only product-centric.

ODOSCOPE always displays personalizations based on the motto "Customers LIKE YOU who bought X also bought Y’". This means that personalization is purely user-specific and therefore personally relevant. (Real-time personas)

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Look-alike-audiences

This real-time data activation based on personal relevance is achieved by dynamically identifying look-alike-audiences that match the current situation (i.e. with every click). This allows for individual personalization for 100% of traffic, even when there is a role change in the same session, and always in accordance with the merchandising goals – without any effort to set up segments and maintain their rules.

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Live session stitching

Session stitching is the process of combining previously anonymous information with a user's known data, e.g. when different devices are used in a user journey or when a newsletter is clicked on after anonymous visits, which can then link the previous visits with the customer data.

ODOSCOPE enables session stitching at the moment of the decisive click. The database expanded in this way is then used immediately and effectively for personalization, and not only at the next visit (after the IDs have been synchronized in the backend systems). Although the session stitching method has been established for a long time, it is often not done live but only overnight, and sometimes this feature is only available at an extra charge.

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Summary

Personalization based on predefined customer segments and rules is under-complex. The attempt to categorize customers according to persona types corresponds more to an ideal than to reality. For segment-based personalization, i.e. personalization that depends on user consent and only reaches parts of the traffic, rule sets are used to activate data, but these require increasing amounts of effort for setup and maintenance: every new or extended use case requires new or adapted rules.

Modern personalization is completely flexible, dynamic and individual, and is not limited to recognized users.

Immediate data activation of all given data sources is essential to optimize the customer journey and increase customer satisfaction. This generates uplifts in KPIs and the achievement of better business goals. Live session stitching and flexible adaptation to role changes in a session are important requirements in e-commerce that have not been adequately addressed so far, but which can have a major impact on conversion rates and thus on sales, purchases and customer satisfaction.

Personalization is possible for every visit: dynamically, flexibly and in real time. Uplifts are guaranteed.

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