Creating Web Site Concierge Systems

Web sites are now the ubiquitous way to reach customers. For companies with many different products and services, it can be very difficult to quickly provide a wide range of site visitors with materials that are of interest to them.  Various web site navigation techniques can be used, but if the appropriate content for a visitor is spread over many pages it is not effective. A better solution is a “Virtual Concierge” that can assist the visitor in finding what will interest them and dynamically building a custom page for them.   Designing the page for the visitor is just a matter of having some logic to determine what material they would be interested in, and the ability to dynamically build and display a web page.  Exsys Corvid does both of these. 

Web sites often have a wide range of information on a company’s products, services, case histories, and many other subjects.  If a site visitor knows precisely what they want, “Search” can be an effective approach, but in many cases, the visitor is simply looking at the site (and company) to see if they have anything relevant to their needs.  Web site designers struggle with this situation, trying to create site navigation options that will be understandable by visitors, and get them to the relevant pages. 

Imagine having your business’ most knowledgeable staff waiting at the entrance to answer your prospects’ questions, and providing specific information. Corvid makes it possible to build a “Virtual Concierge” that can assist each visitor in finding the content that will interest them and dynamically building a custom page for them.  Interactively, a few questions are asked to determine the customer’s “profile”.  The logic in the Corvid system analyzes that to determine which content would be most appropriate.  Corvid dynamically builds a web page with that content, stores it on the server and displays it for the visitor.  The visitor can even bookmark their page and come back to it later. 

For Web developers, laying out pages and trying to come up with appropriate linking navigation can be a hit-or-miss.  Instead, the site content can be examined to determine what type of visitor would be interested in the various items.  Probabilistic logic can be used to rank various possible items and then display only the ones with the highest ranking to keep the custom page short.  The page can contain the actual content, or for longer content, links to it.  The visitor gets a single summary page with the materials most likely to interest them, which prompts them to make a purchase or examine the site (and company) in more detail.  

For example, at Exsys Inc our site has information on using Corvid in many different ways, along with case studies on a very wide range of systems that have been built with our tools.  The overall list is impressive, but what a visitor prefers to see are case studies in their specific industry and related to the types of systems they are considering.  They don’t want to go through 100 case studies, potential missing one similar to they are considering. With 2 questions on their industry and type of system being considered, the Corvid system can probabilistically select a few case studies most relevant to their interests.  Likewise it can select a product description based on their experience with knowledge automation and type of system being considered.  It then builds and displays a custom page which the visitor can view, print and bookmark.  Links in the generated page then allow them to navigate to other parts of the Exsys site by more traditional site navigation.

Building site concierge systems is really just another way to use Exsys Corvid.  This type of system is often called WINK (What I Need to Know), and it is a highly effective way to help visitors get their information from complex sites.