Personalization broadly known as customization

Web pages
Web pages
can be personalized based on the characteristics (interests, social category,
context, etc.), actions (click on a button, open a link, etc.), intent (make a purchase, check the
status of an entity), or any other parameter that can be identified and associated with an
individual, therefore providing them with a tailored user experience. Note that the experience
is rarely simply the accommodation of the user but a relationship between the user and the
desires of the site designers in driving specific actions to achieve objectives (e.g. Increase
sales conversion on a page). The term 
customization
is often used when the site only uses
explicit data such as product ratings or user preferences.
Technically, web personalization can be achieved by associating a visitor segment with a
predefined action. Customizing the user experience based on behavioral, contextual and
technical data is proven to have a positive impact on conversion rate optimization efforts.
Associated actions can range from changing the content of a webpage, presenting a modal
display, presenting interstitials, triggering a personalized email, or even automating a phone
call to the user.
According to a 2014 study from research firm Econsultancy, less than 30% of 
e-commerce
websites have invested in the field of web personalization. However, many companies now
offer services for web personalization as well as web and email recommendation systems
that are based on personalization or anonymously-collected user behaviours.
[4]
There are many categories of web personalization including
1. Behavioral
2. Contextual
3. Technical
4. Historic data

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5. Collaboratively filtered
There are several camps in defining and executing web personalization. A few broad
methods for web personalization may include:
1. Implicit
2. Explicit
3. Hybrid
With implicit personalization, the web personalization is performed based on the different
categories mentioned above. It can also be learned from direct interactions with the user
based on implicit data, such as items purchased or pages viewed.
[5]
With explicit
personalization, the web page (or information system) is changed by the user using the
features provided by the system. Hybrid personalization combines the above two approaches
to leverage the 
best of both worlds
.
Web personalization can be linked to the notion of 
Adaptive hypermedia
(AH). The main
difference is that the former would usually work on what is considered an "open corpus
hypermedia", whilst the latter would traditionally work on "closed corpus hypermedia."
However, recent research directions in the AH domain take both closed and open corpus into
account. Thus, the two fields are closely inter-related.
Personalization is also being considered for use in less overtly commercial applications to
improve the user experience online.
[6]
 Internet activist 
Eli Pariser
has documented that search
engines like 
Google
 and 
Yahoo! News
give different results to different people (even when
logged out). He also points out social media site 
Facebook
changes user's friend feeds
based on what it thinks they want to see. Pariser warns that these algorithms can create a
"
filter bubble
" that prevents people from encountering a diversity of viewpoints beyond their
own, or which only presents facts which confirm their existing views.
On an 
intranet
 or 
B2E
 
Enterprise Web portals
, personalization is often based on user
attributes such as department, functional area, or role. The term "customization" in this
context refers to the ability of users to modify the page layout or specify what content should
be displayed.