Personalization

Has anyone else implemented the Personalization Solution from Percussion? Just wanting to get an idea how the process went for you and as a developer, should I be thinking ahead with some of the slots and content types we are creating?

I’ve never implemented a Personalization Solution. However it’s worth noting that you should always plan ahead when creating slots and content types. Especially content types!

If you’re only making a site or two, that’s fine. However once you get 10+ sites going you really find out how important it is to plan ahead. Think of all your sites, and look at common areas in them (not simply design, but content). And then look to what content types you can reuse, and what slots can be used in multiple situations.

I used to get into the habit of making a new slot for ever single area of the site. Then I realized a lot of the content is sooo similar, I could instead use the rrfList slot, and so on.

In fact, now when I feel the need to create a new slot, I really spend some time analyzing if I can just use an existing one. It’s saved me a lot of headache with each new site I build.

Thanks nick, I think we have done pretty well with reusing content types, templates, and slots as much as possible (even to the point where the content team has hated the word “reuse”.)

We recently had a kick-off meeting with the Percussion implementer who will be working with us on the personalization project to manipulate our content types for use with this new add-on. The biggest thing he mentioned for us to consider was the idea of segmentation of our content types for the external audiences that will be viewing them. It was recommended by Percussion that the segmentation defined for the content types can be reused with our Web Trends tracking profiles to more accurately follow the click-through traffic on the website for our e-mail campaigns and overall web traffic.