Incentive-based website architecture
View Patent ↗The present invention applies gaming theory and well-understood sales processes and techniques to allow the operator of an interactive sales medium to control what is displayed to a user of the medium in a manner that signals their intentions (e.g., looking for a lower price, looking for a particular incentive, etc.) so that the “strategies” being used by the consumer can be identified and exploited to lead the consumer to a desired end choice. In particular, upon identification of the strategies being used by the consumer, incentives (e.g., gradually increasing rewards and/or decreasing “punishments”) are presented to the consumer in such a way that the margins achieved by an eventual sale are slowly decreased with each presentation of the incentives to the consumer. Since the presentation of each incentive increases the likelihood the consumer will make a purchase, margins are maximized for the seller.
1. A computer-implemented method of influencing the actions of users of an interactive content-delivery system, comprising configuring a computer to perform the steps of:
identifying probabilities of selection with respect to all selections offered by said interactive content-delivery system, and designating certain of said selections as low probability selections based on the identified probabilities; and
presenting users of said interactive content-delivery system with incentives based upon said probabilities, whereby said low probability selections receive higher-value incentives than selections having higher probability of selection than said low probability selections.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein said identifying step includes at least the step of: estimating probabilities of selection for each possible selection offered by said interactive content delivery system if historical user data for said interactive content delivery system is unavailable.
3. The method of claim 2 , wherein said identifying step further comprises at least the step of analyzing historical user data for said interactive content delivery system to identify probability of selection based on said historical user data.
4. The method of claim 3 , wherein said step of analyzing historical user data comprises at least the step of performing historical analysis of paths taken by users who have not been presented with incentives.
5. The method of claim 3 , wherein said step of analyzing historical user data is continually updated with new historical user data obtained after users of said interactive content-delivery system have been presented with incentives.
6. The method of claim 3 , wherein said incentives are selected based on gaming theory and include both positive and negative incentives.
7. The method of claim 6 , wherein said interactive content-delivery system comprises a web-based e-commerce site.
8. A computer-implemented method of managing website visitors, comprising configuring a computer to perform the steps of:
receiving a content selection from a website user;
analyzing said content selection and determining probabilities associated with the selection of all sub-choices presented to said user based on said content selection, and designating certain of said selections as low probability selections based on the identified probabilities;
presenting incentives associated with each sub-choice based upon said probabilities, whereby said low probability selections receive higher-value incentives than selections having higher probability of selection than said low probability selections; and
repeating the above steps until a desired end choice has been selected.