Sears Runs Circular Personalization Test To Access Shoppers Appetite For A Custom Tailored 'SearsAd MyWay' Concept

Over at the Sears weekly ad site, a circular personalization trial has been running over the past week or so.  A small percentage of site visitors are given the opportunity to be part of a test group that can “personalize” their weekly ad experience to a limited degree based upon some user inputted category preferences.

Calling it a weekly ad or circular site is a stretch, as it most of the content is regular old eCommerce content that is pulled from the Sears.com product catalog.  With this massive amount of content, the site get’s pretty overwhelming, as the level of “personalization” that is applied to the site is literally entire category level filters.  So when a user that has self-identified as having an interest in appliances, all 6,000+ appliances are brought back, which is the farthest thing from what the promise of personalization holds.

It’s also not clear what level of localization this test site uses.  Users are asked to enter their ZIP code, but other than what appears to be a non-functioning closest store address being displayed, nothing is being done with this location data.

For those lucky weekly ad visitors, this is the opt-in screen to try out the new "personalized" circular. There is a nice video demo that helps explain the value proposition of this concept as well as some on screen visuals and messaging.

For those users that opt in to become part of the test group, they are immediately hit up by the site to input which specific categories they are interested in. These category level interest preferences are retained for those site visitors that return, and can be changed at a later point.

Then once a user inputs their categories of interest, this is where they are taken to an Apple-ekse 'Cover Flow' presentation of an an odd hodgepodge of content that is pulled in across all the various user identified L1 category level interests.

There is another view state possible within the application that makes use of the very typical grid presentation of products. Also along the way, there are guided navigation filters that appear in the left hand navigation area that allow users to refine the content that is being shown in either view.

Overall, its a very alpha effort.  There are many ways to improve the “personalized” ad experience (such as creating a real value add difference that is evident to normal consumers between this “personalized circular site” and the regular Sears.com eCommerce site because as is, the normal Sears.com site is actual easier to use.  However, it still is great to see the experimentation with some very basic levels of site personalization.  Looking forward to seeing the next iteration that improves from the metrics and learnings that this test will generate.