What Is A Decision Engine? And What Can It Do?
Essentially “Decision Engine” or to be more precise “Real-Time Decision Engine” is the way that Oracle describes a neat piece of technology that it is currently offering to companies who want a far more effective web site. Now, before I describe it, please don’t get the idea that this is technology you need to improve your blog stats. It would improve your blog stats, I’m sure, but it’s out of your price bracket, and anyway its sweet spot is in eCommerce, where it improves sales, often in a rather dramatic way.
Let’s cut to the chase, accompanied by a diagram.
Consider someone arriving at a web site. The goal of the web site is to sell, sell, sell. Aside from the goods it has to offer, its only weapon is the web page. In order to maximize the likelihood of a sale the web site needs to marshal all the information it can gather about this potential (or existing) customer. So what information is there to gather?
- It can know where the visitor came from (which previous web site), also the browser in use, device (PC, MAC, smartphone) IP address, etc.
- It can gather information from a cookie placed in the visitor’s browser (assuming that the visitor allows cookies and has visited the site before).
- It can refer to the full record it has of this visitor’s previous behavior on the web site including any purchases the visitor may have made (as long as it can identify the visitor.
- It can record the user’s behavior now, as it happens.
Once it has done this, it can analyze all of this information. Then it can use its conclusions to present a web page that maximizes the chances of the visitor moving closer to buying something. So look at the diagram and imagine that the web page is broken up into 5 distinct areas as shown. The goal will be to make the optimal special offers, show the best adverts, present the most relevant optional actions and so on.
There are many products that attempt to do this kind of thing. And to be honest, doing some kind of analysis and being able respond to each visitor with some knowledge of their profile is going to pay off. Many of the products I’ve come across will improve the success rate of eretail sites, and I have little doubt that there are others I’ve not looked at that will bring home the bacon.
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