Personalization trend in UX

How the user experience can be taken to the next level using in-app personalization.

Personalization of an app or of any product definitely takes its user experience to the next level by giving users an extra something useful without them having to ask for it. Tell me who wouldn’t like to receive some amazing recommendations when you visit a new place? Or to receive some quick suggestions on easy breakfast recipes every morning? Or when your navigation app pays close attention to your usage patterns and carefully asks you if you are heading home at 6:00 PM daily? And all of this without you having to ask for it. Humans tend to like it when somebody (in this case something) takes care of them and shares the workload.

So what is personalization?

Personalization happens when the system curates the information, functionality or content to user’s need and expectations and that too all in a real time. Apps deploy a technology in their system that learns from the user’s data to provide users an experience most unique to them.

Why Personalize?

People like it more when the app provides individual experiences when interacting with them. It makes users feel more special and connected. Think of it in this way, if an app has no single element of personalization, it may feel like it is not helping you much even when it is. To give you a clear understanding, let’s take an example of Spotify Running, now this is a tool added by Spotify to help & motivate joggers. It matches music to your running tempo to keep you motivated to move through your run. It uses your phone’s sensors to detect your steps per minute and finds tracks with a similar beat. But without this highly personalized tool, Spotify Running is nothing but a simple music app Spotify. Now don’t get me wrong, Spotify is great when it comes to listening music from our favorite playlist. But going a step ahead and personalizing the brand definitely makes it more appealing to its certain set of users as it takes care of their pain points and needs in a right way. This helps to create an instant bond in between users and the app which in turn means loyalty towards the brand.

When executed effectively, personalization will give you many more users with great loyalty and affinity towards your brand and will help produce significantly more revenue over a long term. Studies show that users tend to act quickly when facing the “closing the deal”…