[Sigia-l] customization & personalization vs. session lenght & return visits

[Livia Labate]

Hello SIGIA-Lers,                                  [X-post AIfIA-members]

Does anybody know of studies analyzing the relationship between
customization and/or personalization to the time spent 'using' a web site
and number of return visits?

I'm talking about letting your users:
- customize (change layout, colors, etc) and
- personalize (make content correspond their taste)

...as a strategy to support two goals:

1) increase average session length (more time on the site
    exploring content, not wasting time) and
2) to increase user fidelity (keep them coming back again).

I'm working on a project where there was minimal customization in version
1.0 and the version 2.0 is supposed to have lots of
customization/personalization options to support those two goals of
increasing return visits and time spent using the site.

My gut tells me there must be a break-even point, where the number of
options/possibilities is so overwhelming that the benefits of having such
options start to decrease. Something like search results Futility Point [1]
I want to find out if I'm right or wrong and how to achieve balance.
Thoughts?

There is good stuff on SIGIA-L Archives but nothing that really addresses my
question. Here's what I've got so far:

* Information Architecture and Personalization
   http://argus-acia.com/white_papers/personalization.html

*  Information Architecture & Personalization
   http://user-experience.org/uefiles/iapersonalization/

* Strategic Plans for Personalization
   http://www.clickz.com/experts/archives/mkt/precis_mkt/article.php/819891

* Personalization or Customization: Which Defines Portal Value?
   http://tinyurl.com/3o669 (is this worth the $99?)

* Benchmarking Personalization and Customization
   http://tinyurl.com/3ltvs (is this worth the $600?!!)

* Dynamic Content for Sticky Web sites
   http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~dcplumer/plumer-dynamic

* Meaningful Personalization
   http://www.merges.net/theory/20010402.html

* Personalization is Over-Rated
   http://www.useit.com/alertbox/981004.html

* Customization vs. Personalization (SIGIA-L)
   http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0012/0022.html

* Homepage Customization Stats (SIGIA-L)
   http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0308/0281.html

* Personalization Standards (SIGIA-L)
   http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0101/0137.html

* Report slams Web personalization
   http://news.com.com/2100-1038-5090716.html?tag=cd_top

* Decision Trees, Personalization and How to Show it All
   http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0302/0397.html

* What's wrong with Personalization? (SIGIA-L)
   http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0103/0032.html

* IA resources for site personalization (SIGIA-L)
   http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0102/0437.html

* Personalization goes one-on-one with reality
   http://shorewalker.com/section1/personalisation_worth.html

[1] http://www.iawiki.net/FutilityPoint

Thanks,

Livia Labate
liv at livlab.com > http://livlab.com < http://aifia.org