A lot has been written about the customer journey, or path to purchase, and about the importance of communicating the right message at the right time according to what stage of the journey your customers find themselves.
One of the most popular forms of personalization used on eCommerce sites is the “people who bought this, also bought that” recommendation. The assumption is that people have similar tastes and so if other people are buying the same things, so should you. Sometimes, the intention is to ensure that someone who buys an item requiring additional accessories be reminded of all that is needed before checking out their shopping cart.
Some sites use an algorithm to predict which products should be paired with each other. Others simply tag products and bucket them into groups. Now the latter can same time and money, but sometimes leads to some strange recommendations as seen below on the Tiger Direct website.
In his best-selling book Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell examines the concept of influential individuals and how they impact the spread of trends and change. He categorizes them into three groups: Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen.
We all know one or more Connectors: people who seem to know everyone. People through whom you could reach a very large population. Mavens on the other hand, are those who are considered experts in a given field by their peers, who know the answer to any question related to that field and to whom everyone they know turns when they have a question or need advice.
Seth Godin and Tom Peters sum it up quite nicely: writing a blog — just like writing a book — changes the way you think, the way you communicate and the way you live. Do you have a blog? How has it changed your life?
