The Impact of Machine Learning on Drupal Personalization

Have you ever wondered why the websites you visit frequently offer products or services that might interest you? For example, an online movie cinema website shows different combinations of movies that usually suit your tastes well. The same can be said about online stores. Whenever you return to the website, it suggests items you'd like to buy. Most of the time, predictions match your tastes. This indicates that such Drupal websites use machine learning to personalise the customer experience.

What is Machine Learning?

Leading companies are now using machine learning to deliver personalized services on a massive scale. Artificial intelligence allows computers to learn independently from direct programming. Computers can now search for data and identify patterns. They change their actions based on these patterns.
On a simplified level, the online cinema algorithm might notice that you have watched the first three episodes of a TV series. From this, the system will know that you are probably interested in this series and would appreciate the opportunity to watch the show's fourth episode. Also, based on your chosen genre, the website offers you series and movies in a similar style.
Of course, the Drupal website algorithms are very advanced. They have access to each user's records. Machine learning algorithms can spot patterns and recognize when your tastes are similar to those of others. At the same time, the system may notice that the typical fans of this or that TV show do not like some other genre, so it avoids showing you any programs of this genre.
Machine learning allows businesses to process massive amounts of data and identify trends and patterns. This provides them with the ability to optimize systems and personalise service to their customers.

What is Website Personalization?

By now, web personalization has become a critical component of any forward-thinking company's marketing efforts. It allows you to provide customers with a more meaningful user experience and contributes to business development.
A "web personalization" strategy involves creating dynamic experiences on a website based on visitors' preferences, behaviour, location, and other factors. It can also be perceived as an understanding of the interests and needs of your client. 
A tailored digital experience is essential as websites become the primary communication between companies and their customers. A study found that 70% of consumers use the company's website as a primary source of information.

What can machine learning do for Drupal?

Drupal developers have been focusing on machine learning and using artificial intelligence to personalize websites for a long time. One of the first proof of this was the DrupalCon Baltimore 2017 session, which showed how to personalize web content based on the subtle elements of a person's digital identity.
Standard personalization approaches recommend content based on a person's profile or past activity. For example, if a person is searching for a backpack, the system will offer some more backpacks. Or, if the user reads movie reviews, it will work: "Maybe you'll like this review of a recently released movie."

Web personalisation with Drupal and Machine Learning

The Impact of Machine Learning on Drupal Personalization should not be underestimated. Integrating machine learning with Drupal can give a lot of advantages:

• Improvements in Search Functionality. One of the major problems in search results is synonyms. For example, if you are searching for something related to ‘education’ on a Drupal website, you may use a variety of synonyms like teaching, tutoring, or coaching for the search. Using one particular word only displays results related to it. If you input ‘teaching’ in the search bar, it will display only the content with the word ‘teaching’ in it. Thus, if the content you are looking for uses some other synonym, you cannot find it without inputting the correct word. This problem can be solved using machine learning to train the search algorithm to look for synonyms as well and display the related results.
• Automatic Generation of Alt Tags. Alt tag specifies an alternate text for the image in case the image is not loaded. Since search engines cannot see pictures, they use alt tags to know about the possible contents of the image. Machine learning can automatically generate alt tags for the views of a website by analyzing the website’s content.
• Image Captioning. Machine learning can be integrated to analyze the image content and generate a related caption automatically. The admin could configure whether the captions should be added automatically or after manual approval. This will save a lot of time for website admins.
• Website Personalization. The future of websites is predicted to be automatically adopted according to the user by analyzing their reads, searches, etc.
• Vulnerability Scanning. Using machine learning, Drupal-based websites can automatically scan themselves for any vulnerabilities and fix/notify the administrator about them. 
• Grammar. Machine learning can automatically scan the content of Drupal websites and point out grammatical mistakes.
• Topic Suggestions. Machine learning can suggest topics for new content based on ongoing trends and happenings worldwide. Such an option will attract more bloggers to Drupal as this will make their work easier.
• Voice-Based Operations. Imagine controlling your website by using your voice! The user can navigate the website, and the administrator can do the same in the admin panel.
• SEO. Meta tags are an important constituent of Search Engine Optimization. Machine learning can automatically generate meta tags for each website page, depending on the content.

Benefits of integrating AI in Drupal websites

Customer, product, and service data is collected via social media, email, and other communication methods. A Drupal website can offer content based on predictions based on previous browsing history by integrating machine learning. There is no need for people to log in. Instead, unique user IDs are assigned to it. By matching their browsing patterns, such as clicks, searches, and frequently visited pages, a personalized web experience can be provided. 

• Consequently, Drupal websites can benefit from machine learning, including:
• Provide recommendations based on recent user interactions with the site.
• Understand users' general attitude to a given topic and context.
• Give advice based on recent user interactions with the site.
• Lead scoring (ranking based on the likelihood of participation in the current session).
• Depending on past trends, suggest other related products the user might be interested in.

 Drupal makes it easy to integrate these promising future features into modules. Your Drupal websites will perform better with machine learning for personalization!