Sitecore – ‘P’ for Profiling

Profiling – the activity of collecting important and useful details about someone or something.

Back when I started working on Sitecore, I was awestruck by it’s OOTB profiling/personalization features. I came across a demo site, that profiled visitors and presented contents based on their interests. This was something super cool for me. And naturally raised my curiosity.

Finally after days made some time for a casual dive on the idea, thereby sharing my findings here.

In other words, this article is about Sitecore Profile, Profile Keys, Profile/Pattern Cards and Personalizing contents based on the profiling. (Yea Profiles, Profile Cards/Pattern Cards have been there for many years now but still it was kinda new to me)

For demonstration purpose, I am gonna make use of a travel destination site. This site serves as a online catalogue of different tour destinations, providing information about different countries and their tourism details.

As for as Personalization is concerned, We’re gonna have a default page banner on the home page, once the visitor starts browsing the site for destinations, Sitecore’s gonna profile him and gonna suggest him with relevant destinations based on his interests, (Which we would have predicted by profiling him) by showing him a related page banner content.

Before we proceed further, I would like to mention that, the Profiling/Personalization’s accuracy depends heavily upon the way they are configured. Sitecore provides several OOTB features to achieve best profiling/personalization experience that can match your content strategy.

First, I will explain about the terminologies that we will come across in this article,

Profile – Profiles are means to categorize different types of visitors/Contents to your site. For this travel site, the Profile will be Destination. (To create a profile, go to Marketing Control Panel module under Marketing Applications section in the Sitecore Launchpad. You can create one under /sitecore/system/Marketing Control Panel/Profiles – using insert options)

Notice, the type field. This is how sitecore determines the profile value. The other values include Sum, Average. For now we will go with Percentage.

Profile Keys – Profile Keys constitute a Profile. For my Destination Profile, the keys may include Historical, Safari, Adventure and Hiking, Cultural, Romantic and Urban. These are more like attributes that when assigned a numerical value will give the type of destination, a visitor is interested in.

We can create a Profile Key under the profile based on the Profile Key template using Insert Options. Here, Minimum/Maximum value can be any number. Based on these Min/Max and Default values, we will update the Profile/Pattern Card which in turn can be associated with a Content or Visitor.

Similarly, we can create Profile Keys for Culture, Historical, Romantic, Safari and Urban.

Profile Cards – Different profile cards can be created for a Profile. Profile Card holds a numerical value for each Profile Keys associated with the corresponding profile. We can then assign these Profile Cards to each of the site’s pages (content items) based on the content they describe. They can be created under Profile Cards folder (which is auto created when we create a profile) using it’s Insert Option.

In this Travel Destination Site, the  types of Profile Card may include, Adventure and Hiking Destination, Historical and Cultural Destination, Metro Destination, Romantic Destination and Wildlife and Safari Destination. Each profile cards, hold different values for their profile keys based on their destination type. Say, for Metro Destination profile card, Urban Profile Key will higher value for Urban Profile Key whereas other profile keys will have less values.

For Metro Destination Profile Card, we have given ‘3’ for Urban Profile Key where as default value ‘1’ for other profile keys.

For Adventure and Hiking Destination Profile Card, we have given ‘3’ for Adventure and Hiking Profile Key where as default value ‘1’ for other profile keys.

Pattern Cards – Pattern Cards are similar to profile in a way. They both have the same Profile Keys associated with the relevant Profile under which they are created. That’s the only similarity. Now the difference, Unlike Profile Cards, Pattern Cards represent the person who visits the site(visitor). To elaborate further, for our travel site, based on the profile keys we have created we can categorize the visitors to, City Slickers (Who likes to travel to Metro Cities like New York, Montreal), Wildlife Travelers (who likes to do Safari and like to visit destinations like Tanzania, Namibia), Romantic Goer (who likes to visit Romantic Getaways like Italy), Thrill Seeker (who likes to do Hiking and Adventurous trips and like to visit destinations like Austria, Norway) and finally Culture Vulture(who likes to visit Cultural and Historical destinations like India, Japan)

They can be created under Pattern Cards folder (which is auto created when we created a profile) using it’s Insert Option.

Just like Profile Cards, each Pattern Cards will have different values for each Profile Keys based on the type of the visitors they represent. Wildlife Traveler will have more value for Safari Profile key than other Profile keys. Likewise for other pattern cards.

For Thrill Seeker Pattern Card, we have given 5 for Adventure and Hiking Profile Key and default value – ‘1’ for other Profile Keys.

For City Slickers, Urban profile key is set to ‘5’ whereas other key are default.

Notice that the profile card and pattern card naming convention is different although they have same set of profile keys. This was made deliberately to denote that Profile Cards will be associated with contents and Pattern Cards will be associated with Visitors.

Now let’s associate the profile cards to Sitecore page items. Click on the icon present in the right top, above the Quick info title bar to edit the profile cards associated with the item.

Then Select Edit option for the Destination Profile.

Since, New York is a Metro Destination, select the Metro Destination profile card.

Similarly for India, I’ve chosen Historical and Cultural Destination card.

Updated the profile cards details for other countries/cities available.

Now the final act, adding a personalization rule for the Home Page Banner rendering based on the Profile/Pattern Card.

Okay, here the idea is when the user visits the site, browses through different Destination pages, say India, Japan, Austria, New York and Montreal. After visiting few pages, the user will be mapped to anyone of our Pattern Card under Destination Profile.

While visiting these pages, Sitecore triggers the Profile Card associated with these contents and updates the Pattern Card associated with the Visitor. A Visitor will be associated with only one Pattern Card at a time. So, when he visit’s a page say India, which is mapped to Historical and Destination Profile Card, his Destination Profile’s Culture and Historical Profile Key’s values will be incremented. Thus, the user will be linked to anyone of our Pattern Cards. And we can predict his interests.

Meaning, if he visits, pages like Tanzania, Namibia, we can assume that he’s interested in Safari and will be associated with Wildlife Traveler Pattern Card eventually. If he visits, pages like Italy, Venice, Paris we can assume that he’s interested in Romantic Getaways and will be associated with Romantic Goer Pattern Card.

Here, for the demo, say after he visits New York and Montreal , he will be mapped to a City Slicker Pattern Card. And now if he hasn’t Australia which is again a Metro Destination, we are personalizing the Home page banner to present content related to Australia.

P.S: If he has visited other pages say Tanzania, Namibia his Adventure and Hiking/Safari Profile Key will have high value at some instance during his visit and he will be mapped to Thrill Seeker or Wildlife Traveler Pattern Card. In that case, this rule wont be executed and default Page Banner will only be presented to the Visitor.

Finally, after the Visitor is mapped to City Slicker Pattern Card and if he hasn’t visited Australia page yet, home page is personalized with a page banner redirecting to Australia.

Although it doesn’t make much sense to personalize a home page banner, the same rule and concept can be applied to a different component say, a recommender list rendering which can be included in a Destination page’s Side bar or can be put to use for other wide requirement.

Note:

1. Profiling will kick in only after a visitor has browsed at least 3 pages associated with Profile Card in your site. This is a default setting – Analytics.Pattern.MinimalProfileScoreContent present in Sitecore.Analytics.Tracking.config
2. The idea is to not to rush in profiling a visitor. However, this value varies depending upon the site as it is associated with the number pages in your site and can be modified accordingly.