Adding Demographic Properties to the User Object Profile Definition

The User Object profile definition is designed to collect data about users. You might need to update it to collect the specific information your organization requires. If your organization wants to use the Demographic segment and prediction analysis models provided with the Predictor resource, you must update the User Object profile definition to collect the demographic data required to build the Demographics model. The demographic data you collect can also be used to build the Combined Demographics and Transactions analysis model.

To collect demographic data on your Web site for use in the Demographic and Combined analysis models, perform the following steps:

1. Decide how you are going to collect the data. Create any site terms you will need.

2. Your system administrator creates a data member for each of the new demographic properties you will add to the User Object profile definition.

3. Add the following properties to your User Object profile definition. If you are using site terms to collect the data, set the property type to site term, and set the type reference to the appropriate site term.

   The following table shows the user profile properties that the Demographic analysis models require.

   Property	Type
   User ID	Number or string
   Age	Number or string
   Occupation	Number or string
   Marital Status	Number or string
   Gender	Number or string
   Income	Number or string
   Education	Number or string
   Children	Number (of children)
   Family Role	Number or string
   Region	Number or string

4. Map each of the demographic properties to the appropriate data member.

5. Set each of the demographic properties as Exported to the Data Warehouse.

6. Your site designer must update your Web site with the new profile properties.

7. Determine how much data you will need to collect for the results to be meaningful.

8. Your system administrator imports the demographic data into the Data Warehouse and builds the segment and prediction models.

If data collected with these properties is not in your user profiles, your system administrator will not be able to build the demographic analysis models. The properties can be either numbers or strings because predictive models look for correlations between data, and therefore do not distinguish between numbers and strings. Use single-valued site terms to facilitate and normalize user responses to the demographic properties. Site terms are stored as strings.

To add demographic properties to the User Object profile definition

1. Your system administrator must add the following columns to the profile database, and create a data member for each one:
   • Age
   • Occupation
   • Marital Status
   • Gender
   • Income
   • Education
   • Children
   • Family Role
   • Region
2. Use the Site Terms Editor module to create the following site terms:

   Site term	Site term values
   Age	20-30; 30-40; 40-50; 50-60
   Occupation	President; Vice President; Manager; Administrative Assistant
   Marital Status	Married; Divorced; Single; Widowed
   Gender	Male; Female
   Income	$20,000-35,000; $35,000-60,000; $60,000-80,000
   Education	High School; College Graduate; Masters Degree; Doctorate Degree; Professional Degree
   Children	1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6
   Family Role	Employed; Student; Other
   Region	North; South; East; West

3. Use the Profile Definition Designer module to add a property group to the User Object profile definition called Demographics.
4. Use the Profile Definition Designer module to add the following properties to the Demographics property group:

   Property and type reference	Type
   Age	Site Term
   Occupation	Site Term
   Marital Status	Site Term
   Gender	Site Term
   Income	Site Term
   Education	Site Term
   Children	Site Term
   Family Role	Site Term
   Region	Site Term

5. Map each of the new properties to the corresponding data members, and mark each property as exported to the Data Warehouse.
6. Click on the toolbar to save the new properties and return to the Profiles screen.
7. Use the Publish Profiles module to publish your changes to your Web site.
8. Your Web designer must add the new properties to your site Registration page.
9. Your system administrator imports profile data into the Data Warehouse.
10. Your system administrator uses the Predictor resource to build Demographic segment and prediction models.

After your system administrator has built the Demographic segment and prediction models, you use the Business Desk AnalysisSegment Viewer module to view the Demographic segment model, and export the segment model to the List Manager as a list. In the Users module, you can search for the list, and then modify the profiles that exist in that list. .

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