Each visitor is represented by a profile, which is a set of properties that describes and maintains information about a visitor. One property determines the visitor’s type; once a visitor enters the Quincy Funds site, he or she is recognized as an investor, a broker, or a guest, and the home page is tailored to his or her interests. Guest profiles contain basic information such as the type of browser that is used to access the site. Profiles for investors and brokers maintain detailed information such as preferences and contact information.
In addition to having a specific profile type, visitors are segmented into profile groups according to information in their profiles. At Quincy Funds, investors are segmented according to their investment strategy; they can belong to one of three profile groups: aggressive, conservative, or moderate.
All profiles contain a locale property that identifies the appropriate language (English, French, German, or Japanese) in which to display the navigation bar and feature articles.
For detailed information on profiles, see Setting Up Visitor Profiles in the ATG Personalization Guide for Business Users.
On each user’s home page, he or she can view the feature and new articles tailored to his or her interests. The following functions are available to investors only:
Browse the funds offered by Quincy Funds. Investors who view funds may receive prospectuses by mail.
Manage investment goals. Each investor has an “Aggressiveness” index (a profile property) that tracks the number of risky funds he or she shows interest in. The site adjusts this index as the user looks at various funds. For example, displaying information about an aggressive fund causes this index to increase.
View the portfolio. The demonstration does not include functionality for maintaining the portfolio; it demonstrates only that investors have portfolios, while brokers and guests do not.
View the list of clients for each broker and use sales tools.
Send targeted e-mail to investors.
The remaining sections of this chapter walk you through the various features of the site as a guest, an investor, and a broker. Note that many of the links are non-functional (or else take you to the list of funds) since this is only a demonstration application.