Using Profiles in Web Site Management

Article
11/12/2009

Profiles are essential to Web site management because they provide information about the users who visit your site and how they use it. You use profiles to analyze user data and to target content to users.

A profile is a set of characteristics that define any business-related item, such as a user, a company, or a context (date and time). The following figure shows different types of profiles.

A figure showing different types of profiles.

In Commerce Server, you use profiles to store information about business-related items. For example, you use profiles to collect data from users on your Web site. You can also enter data directly into user and organization profiles by using Commerce Server Business Desk.

Using Business Desk, you can:

Define information to collect about users visiting your site.
Analyze profile information.
Create target expressions to match content to users.
Create advertising, discount, and direct mail campaigns to target specific user groups.
Deliver personalized direct mail messages to users.

For example, assume you have a site that sells sporting goods. The following workflow provides an example of how you can use Business Desk to analyze user activity and target content to users.

Your system administrator creates profile definitions for registered users and anonymous users.
After your site has been running for a period of time, you analyze profile data to determine who is visiting your site. You can:
- Run reports to analyze who is visiting your site.
- Run reports to analyze which products in your catalog are selling well, and which ones are not selling well.
- View segment models that show likely customer behavior, such as which products they might buy.
You then use the results of your analysis to create a campaign to target content to users. You can:
- Use the profiles to create target expressions and target groups.
- Create a discount campaign to offer these specific users a discount.
After the discount has been in production for a period of time, you analyze the results of the campaign. You can:
- Run reports to analyze the success of the campaign.
- Run reports to find out whether this group of users increased their purchases of discounted items.
- View segment models to find out whether the same segment of users are showing the same behavior.
If your users did not increase their purchases of discounted items, you create a direct mail campaign to deliver personalized messages offering the users a discount on a certain product.
You export lists of users to the List Manager module from static reports, segment models, and prediction models. You can use the data in the user lists to deliver direct mail campaigns, target personal content, and update user profiles.

For information about creating expressions and targeting content to users, see Targeting and Personalization.

Using Profiles in Web Site Management

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