January 25, 2007
If you like this blog post….
Recommendations can influence much of what we read on the web, from friends emailing us links to stories through to Digg votes and the less overt tagging of pages that signpost areas of interest.
When companies such as Amazon make recommendations, the aim is to sell more of its inventory by recognising the user’s interests.
Its collaborative-filtering technology is product based – “if you like this product you’re looking at, you might like this related product or you might like to know that other people looked at these related products,” is how it goes.
CleverSet, which has just announced new funding of $2m, takes a different approach, combining product information with data on a customer’s behaviour and the company’s website structure.
Noting times spent on pages, the clicks made and how users navigate sites can provide significant clues to what customers might be looking for, says Todd Humphrey, CleverSet’s chief executive.
“We are more concerned with the visitor and where they might end up next,” he says.
The company, whose technology is used by more than 60 online retailers, including Overstock.com, says it has managed to significantly increase sales through more relevant recommendations.
It has competition in a growing market for recommendation software from companies such as Aggregate Knowledge and ChoiceStream. Aggregate Knowledge has been successful in turning media sites onto the power of recommendations for content within their properties, which can increase the time visitors spend on the site and increase ad revenues.
Sphere is doing a similar job recommending relevant blog posts ….hey Sphere! What about this one then?
