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~ posted by Kassia St Clair, December 20th 2011

Remember the last time you shopped online? You may not, but your computer does. Some shops use the information about what you looked at on one site to generate banner advertisements on the homepages of other sites. I was looking for a potato ricer. The John Lewis site showed they had two types: Kitchen Craft and OXO Good Grips. I phoned up, reserved the first of these two and went to the shop to buy it. After that, each time I clicked on the Guardian homepage I saw an ad for the Kitchen Craft potato ricer. This week, after looking at a pair of All Saints boots, I keep seeing the same boots appear on sites I visit. The ad also shows me three or four pairs of boots that are very similar to the ones I looked at.
 
This doesn't seem very smart. Online shops tend to display items in groups. You click on "boots", a display comes up for the entire collection, you scroll through the collection and when you find one that you might like, you click on that to get details and more pictures. When these banner ads on other sites show you similar boots to the ones you have looked at they are almost always (in my experience) showing you something that you have seen.
 
If companies are going to use software that remembers what people have looked at, then they should do something with the information that's more useful to the customer. Why keep showing us items we've decided against or perhaps even own? Better to show us coordinating or affiliated items. If we've looked at Xboxes, show us some Xbox games. If we've looked at high heels, show us a cocktail dress, some knock-out earrings or the perfect red lipstick. That would be helpful.

Kassia St Clair is editorial assistant at Intelligent Life

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