An adaptive website is a

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikip ...

that builds a model of user activity and modifies the information and/or presentation of information to the user in order to better address the user's needs.

Overview

An adaptive website adjusts the structure, content, or presentation of information in response to measured user interaction with the site, with the objective of optimizing future user interactions. Adaptive websites "are web sites that automatically improve their organization and presentation by learning from their user access patterns." User interaction patterns may be collected directly on the website or may be

mined Mined may refer to: * Mined (text editor), a terminal-based text editor * Mining, the extraction of valuable geological materials from the Earth See also * Mind (disambiguation) * Mine (disambiguation) Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer ...

from

Web server A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initi ...

logs. A model or models are created of user interaction using

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

and

statistical methods Statistics (from German: '' Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industr ...

. The models are used as the basis for tailoring the website for known and specific patterns of user interaction.

Techniques

* The

collaborative filtering Collaborative filtering (CF) is a technique used by recommender systems.Francesco Ricci and Lior Rokach and Bracha ShapiraIntroduction to Recommender Systems Handbook Recommender Systems Handbook, Springer, 2011, pp. 1-35 Collaborative filtering ...

method: Collected user data may be assessed in aggregate (across multiple users) using

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

techniques to cluster interaction patterns to user models and classify specific user patterns to such models. The website may then be adapted to target clusters of users. In this approach, the models are explicitly created from historic user information with new users are classified to an existing model and a pre-defined mapping is used for existing content and content organization. * The

statistical hypothesis testing A statistical hypothesis test is a method of statistical inference used to decide whether the data at hand sufficiently support a particular hypothesis. Hypothesis testing allows us to make probabilistic statements about population parameters. ...

method:

A/B testing A/B testing (also known as bucket testing, split-run testing, or split testing) is a user experience research methodology. A/B tests consist of a randomized experiment that usually involves two variants (A and B), although the concept can be als ...

or similar methods are used in conjunction with a library of possible changes to the website or a change-generation method (such as random variation). This results in the automated process website change, impact assessment, and adoption of change. Some examples include ''genetify'' for website look and feel, and ''snap ads'' for

online advertising Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. ...

. In this approach (specifically genetify), the model is represented implicitly in the population of possible sites and adapted for all users that visit the site.

Differentiation

User landing pages (such as

iGoogle iGoogle (formerly Google Personalized Homepage) was a customizable Ajax-based start page or personal web portal launched by Google in May 2005. It was discontinued on November 1, 2013,Google SupportiGoogle's Decommission/ref> because the compa ...

) that allow the user to customize the presented content are not adaptive websites as they rely on the user to select rather than the automation of the selection and presentation of the

web widget A web widget is a web page or web application that is embedded as an element of a host web page but which is substantially independent of the host page, having limited or no interaction with the host. A web widget commonly provides users of the ...

's that appear on the website.

Collaborative filtering Collaborative filtering (CF) is a technique used by recommender systems.Francesco Ricci and Lior Rokach and Bracha ShapiraIntroduction to Recommender Systems Handbook Recommender Systems Handbook, Springer, 2011, pp. 1-35 Collaborative filtering ...

such as

recommender system A recommender system, or a recommendation system (sometimes replacing 'system' with a synonym such as platform or engine), is a subclass of information filtering system that provide suggestions for items that are most pertinent to a particular ...

s, generate and test methods such as

, and machine learning techniques such as clustering and

classification Classification is a process related to categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Classification is the grouping of related facts into classes. It may also refer to: Business, organizat ...

that are used on a website do not make it an adaptive website. They are all tools and techniques that may be used toward engineering an adaptive website.

Notes

References

* J.D. Velásquez and V. Palade, "Adaptive Web Sites: A Knowledge Extraction from Web Data Approach", IOS Press, 2008 * Mike Perkowitz,

Oren Etzioni Oren Etzioni (born 1964) is an American entrepreneur, Professor Emeritus of computer science, and founding CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2). On June 15, 2022, he announced that he will step down as CEO of AI2 effective ...

,
Towards adaptive Web sites: Conceptual framework and case study
, Artificial Intelligence 118(1-2), 2000 {{DEFAULTSORT:Adaptive Website Websites Collective intelligence Social information processing