Information Card Win #1 - Easy First Time Visit Personalization

As I mentioned here the User Centric Interop at the recent Burton Catalyst was a great success. But a lot of people I talked to couldn’t think of a good way to leverage Information Cards. To help with that, I am going to post a series of suggested wins that you can have with Information Cards today.

I am going to focus mostly on Self-Issued Cards. Why Self-Issued? Because I am focusing on wins you can have today without needing pre-existing Identity Providers, or new business arrangements. These are wins that are completely under your control as a Service Provider.

Win #1 is not authentication at all, but personalization. Information Cards can be used by a user to personalize your site for them the first time they visit. They can do it easily with a couple of clicks. Additionally this personalization information can be updated automatically each time they visit the site if needed.

For instance, suppose you run a travel web site. First time users can click on the Information Card login logo and submit a Self-Issued Card. The site would then know for that user the city of residence. It could then show the user deals to or from his local airport. Authentication doesn’t really come into play until the user decides to make a purchase. Then the normal e-commerce purchasing patterns can be applied.

Another good example of this win would be a book or movie site. After submitting the Self-Issued Information Card to a book or movie site, the site would then be personalize to show results that are known to be of interest to the age and sex of the user (if specified).

Users do not like entering the same personalization information over and over again. Especially if it’s a first time visit to site that they are not sure that they would want to use. Information Cards provide a quick and easy first time personalization mechanism.