Sitecore Content Profiling

By tagging content with visitor profiles, you'll gain insights into visitor behavior and interests as they journey through your site. Let's explore how it can elevate your digital marketing.

Sitecore profiling comprises five essential components:

1. Profiles: Categorize your website visitors.

2. Profile Keys: Define the attributes for each profile.

3. Profile Cards: Segment and assign contacts to suitable content.

4. Personas: Create fictional representations of visitor/customer types.

5. Pattern Cards: Customize content by mapping profile values to specific visitor types.

Visitor Understanding

Understanding your website's visitors is fundamental to Sitecore content profiling.

It involves identifying the offerings, visitor demographics, and interests. This forms the basis for creating Sitecore Profiles, Profile Keys, Profile Cards, and Pattern Cards.

In our scenario, we are categorizing the equipment catalog of an agricultural machinery company. We focus on profiling equipment, which includes categories like:

• Tractors & Telehandlers

• Haytools & Spreaders

• Balers

• Forage Equipment

• Combines & Headers

• Spraying Equipment

• Tillage and Seeding Equipment

• Grape & Olive Harvesters

• Light Construction Equipment

• Utility Vehicles

• Front Loaders & Attachments

These equipment categories become Profile Keys within the "Equipment Type Interest" Profile.

We also define customer segments such as:

• Landscaping

• Grape/Olive Harvester

• Building Contractor

• Hay and Forage

• Government and Municipality

These segments are represented by Profile Cards, which are part of the same "Equipment Type Interest" Profile. Profile cards are essential for content profiling and can share common key values.

Profiling Model

In the Sitecore profiling model, the core concept is to establish the connection between Profile Keys (representing equipment types) and Profile Cards (representing customer segments). This connection quantifies the level of interest each customer segment holds for each product.

This is achieved through a Profiling Model, essentially a spreadsheet that maps out the relationships between Profiles/Personas, Profile Keys, and Profile Cards. Values ranging from 0 to 10 are assigned to indicate the degree of relevance between a product and a specific customer segment.

For instance, the "Grape/Olive Harvester" segment is highly likely to exhibit a strong interest in Grape & Olive Harvesters (score of 10), while showing little to no interest in Balers (score of 0). On the other hand, they might also display some interest in Tractors & Telehandlers (score of 4).

Conversely, the "Building Contractor" is expected to have a substantial interest in Light Construction Equipment (score of 10), no interest in Forage Equipment (score of 0), and a moderate interest in Utility Vehicles (score of 6).

Sitecore profile map

Profile Creation in Sitecore

Sitecore's Marketing Control Panel encompasses a plethora of marketing-related functionalities, including Sitecore profiling, which empowers you to craft profiles or personas.

In our example, we've named the Profile "Equipment Type Interest". Of particular significance is the Type field, as it instructs Sitecore on how to calculate the cumulative values of Profile Keys.

Type field

Below the Profile are the Profile Keys, representing different equipment types:

Equipment Types

Each Profile Key is allocated a maximum value, typically recommended as 10.

Profile Key Example

Subsequently, we have the Profile Cards, symbolizing various customer segments:

Profile Cards

The Profile Card folder includes an Authoring Selection field that requires completion. This choice determines how content is profiled:

• Single: Users can assign only one Profile Card per content item.

• Multiple: Users have the flexibility to assign multiple Profile Cards to content items.

• Multiple with Percentages: Users can assign multiple Profile Cards to content items and specify percentage allocations to each Profile Card based on relevance.

In our example, we've selected "Single".

Authoring Selection

The values within the Profiling Model serve to assign values to Profile Cards in Sitecore profiling.

Profile Card

Pattern Cards map profile values to specific visitor types, thereby driving personalization. To streamline Sitecore profiling, it's recommended to employ the same Profile Card classifications and values for Pattern Cards.

Pattern Cards

Profiling Sitecore Content

In order to monitor and comprehend visitor behavior, Sitecore content must undergo profiling, which involves tagging it with Profile Cards.

Initially, there's no need to tag all content, but rather focus on the most crucial and high-traffic pages that contribute to user journeys with conversion points.

The profile icon located in the top right corner of each content item controls Sitecore profiling and enables users to modify the associated Profile Cards.

Profile Icon

The "Select Profile Cards" window allows users to assign the relevant Profile Cards to content items, following the guidance provided by the Profiling Model.

Select Profile Cards

As visitors explore the website and visit pages with profile tags, Sitecore profiling operates in the background.

Sitecore calculates which pattern card best matches a visitor's accumulated profile value and maps them accordingly. These interactions are recorded in Sitecore Analytics as Pattern Matches.

Once profiles have been created, content can be personalized for visitors who exhibit specific profiles based on their browsing behavior.

Profiling

Streamlining the Process with Bulk Profile Card Assignment

Assigning profile cards to individual pages can be time-consuming, especially for large volumes of site content. Using search operations can expedite this setup. The content editor's search function can generate item lists based on various criteria, including:

• template

• associated tags

• content author

• field values

• item version

• language

The editor can also search within a specific folder to generate even more precise results.

Search Operations

By using search operations, Sitecore can assign profile cards to all relevant content at once. This approach significantly reduces the time required for profile setup, especially for systematically organized content, such as through a tagging strategy or content folder structure.

Technical Insights - Simulate Item Visit

Frequently, the detail page for a product within a catalog is a generic page that receives the product code as a parameter to fetch the required information. In such scenarios, the context item will not represent the equipment profiled earlier. How should these situations be addressed?

In these cases, Sitecore's API comes to the rescue, allowing us to simulate the item visit. More precisely, you should utilize the following API:

For tracking catalog items during the visit to an Equipment detail page, the code snippet below plays a critical role:

private void VisitEquipmentModel(string itemId)
{
    try
    {
        Item model = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem(itemId);
        Sitecore.Analytics.Data.TrackingFieldProcessor.Process(model);
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        ...
    }
}

Particularly, this Sitecore API simulates page visits:

Sitecore.Analytics.Data.TrackingFieldProcessor.Process(model)