SMBs: How personalization can improve your performance

Phillip Klien, Chief Innovation Officer and Head of US Operations, Predicta: We announced our entry into the US market just over one month ago and have had great interest in the new SiteApps platform. We have been seeing steady, double-digit percent growth for the last couple of months in the US, and we're planning to start growing that number significantly in early 2013. Hiring and securing an office space are still in the works, so we'll kick off business development in Q1.

Kristina: There have been a few studies lately regarding SMBs and the need for site personalization - how does SiteApps answer that need?

Phillip: At Predicta, we believe that website personalization is central to creating an engaging, dynamic online experience for customers. We also recognize that the real opportunity is not creating a wide range of segments on your website, but offering highly customized experiences to the major clusters. The SiteApps platform analyzes customer data in real-time to deliver an entirely individualized page, taking into consideration a customer's location, age, gender, interests and previous browsing history. SiteApps also offers a marketplace of apps and badges that can be tagged to web and mobile sites and targeted at specific groups of customers to build a powerful, consistent brand.

Kristina: Ecommerce is up 14% so far in 2012. What can smaller businesses do to engage these shoppers so that they can better compete with big chains?

Phillip: We built SiteApps specifically so SMBs could easily access many of the same digital marketing technologies used by big brands to help emerging, smaller companies innovate and compete. Catering to the customer with a relevant, personalized digital experience compels site visitors to explore what the business offers. It's like putting your sales person online. For e-commerce, we recommend small businesses apply a 'Pay Now' app to their site. If you're selling on Etsy, eBay or Amazon, there's no reason you shouldn't cut down on the middle man and keep your profits under your roof.

More from Phillip and SiteApps tomorrow, including his top three tips for SMBs through the New Year.

Tags: ecommerce performance, Predicta, SiteApps, smb tools