Today's Overview - Sitecore Personalize - Who is a Guest?

In this blog article, I have written the Boxever or Sitecore Personalise Guest-related definitions in my own words.

Sitecore Personalise is more valuable as the application accumulates more data. Data is key here.

Boxever or Sitecore Personalise is used to collect user data and segment the same for personalization

Guest: Any user of the application is called guest.

Boxever offers following capabilities related to a user:

Segmentation: The process of grouping users to discover something of business value is termed segmentation in Boxever parlance

PII: Personally Identifiable Information are details like first name, last name, DoB and any other personal details the user has provided

Non-PII data comes from external applications wherein the user information is hidden or not captured.

Filtering: The data stored in Boxever can be filtered using operators. This can in turn be used for segmentation.

Type: Users are differentiated as guest, customer based on their state of interaction with the application

Identity resolution: A user will be automatically moved on from one state to another based on their interaction with the application. In other words, Boxever is intelligent enough to check the user/session state and convert their identity.

Data Extensions: Apart from the default PII data stored in Boxever, you can pass data specific to your application. In other words, you can extend the capability of the system. This can help in other options like customised filtering, segmentation etc.

Heatmap: What part of the day, are the user(s) active, when is peak access time range etc.

Order: Information related to order can be consolidated at one or more user(s) level 

Channel preference: User information with regard to what is the preferred channel or device usage based on time of the day/night is possible

Timeline: Details about the session, what pages were accessed , how long etc. are tracked for analysis

As with any tool/offering, personalization gains steam only with data. So, first of all, there needs to be scope to store enough, preferably user data in order to use this capability effectively!