Adaptive website

An adaptive website is a website 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.[1]

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."[2] User interaction patterns may be collected directly on the website or may be mined from
Web server logs. A model or models are created of user interaction using artificial intelligence and statistical
methods. The models are used as the basis for tailoring the website for known and specific patterns of user
interaction.

Techniques
The collaborative filtering method: Collected user data may be assessed in aggregate
(across multiple users) using machine learning 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 method: A/B testing 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. 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) 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's that appear on the website.

Collaborative filtering such as recommender systems, generate and test methods such as A/B testing, and
machine learning techniques such as clustering and classification 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.

See also
Machine learning
Responsive web design
 Web intelligence

Notes
1. Peter Brusilovsky; Alfred Kobsa; Wolfgang Nejdl (2007-06-11). The Adaptive Web: Methods
and Strategies of Web Personalization. Springer. ISBN 978-3-540-72078-2.
2. Perkowitz, Mike; Oren Etzioni (1997). "Adaptive Web Sites: an AI Challenge" (https://web.arc
hive.org/web/20100331101934/http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/adaptive/papers/ijca
i97.pdf) (PDF). Proc. IJCAI-97. Nagoya, Japan. Archived from the original (http://www.cs.was
hington.edu/research/adaptive/papers/ijcai97.pdf) (PDF) on 2010-03-31. Retrieved
2009-08-10.

References
J.D. Velásquez and V. Palade, "Adaptive Web Sites: A Knowledge Extraction from Web
Data Approach", IOS Press, 2008
Mike Perkowitz, Oren Etzioni, "Towards adaptive Web sites: Conceptual framework and
case study (https://web.archive.org/web/20081011063142/http://www.cs.washington.edu/res
earch/adaptive/papers/aij.pdf)", Artificial Intelligence 118(1-2), 2000

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