Sazbean

Using personal analytics to create a better user experience will help you gain insight into your business and your customers (thus increasing revenue). Ankur Shah (from Techlightenment) used the example of the village bakery in the 1970s – the baker knew what you liked and could make recommendations on what to try based on knowing what you chose for years in the past.

On the web we’ve traditionally asked users for information via long registration forms (which are boring for the user), but there is a lot of information available without having to ask. Amazon.com recommends books and products based upon on what you’ve chosen in the past and what others have chosen is similar to the village bakery. These types of recommendations are part of the implicit web and are valuable for both the user (who sees more things that may be of interest) and to the website (who can sell more books).

Think about every interaction on your website as data about your users which should be treated as content. When your users click on a link, when they signup for an enewsletter, and when they come in from a a search engine, they are giving you valuable information that you can use to enhance their experience. One of the most basic enhancements would be to acknowledge users who come in from search engines with the keywords they came in with and give them relevant links from all over your site.

Obviously there are some fairly large privacy issues with using personal data, but if you are upfront with what you are doing and are providing a valuable service, people will be willing to share their information in exchange (just make sure you are providing valuable, relevant services in return).

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