Pattern cards
You use pattern cards to map profile values to specific types of visitors and implement personalization rules. These personalization rules enable you to display different content based on your visitors' behavior on your website.
Sitecore compares visitor activity to your pattern cards in real time, allowing you to classify visitors quickly and consistently.
You typically use pattern cards to:
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Implement personalization rules based upon one or more pattern cards
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Define engagement plan steps that take effect when a visitor's behavior matches the pattern card
How pattern cards work
When a visitor navigates through a website, they accumulate the profile values of all the pages and resources that they request. Sitecore calculates the average score that the visitor has accumulated for each profile and maps the visitor to the pattern card that is the closest match.
A visitor can only be mapped to one pattern card per profile at a time. However, as a visitor navigates through your website, the pattern card that they are mapped to can change as they interact with different items and resources.
You can use the personalization rules engine to implement rules based on pattern cards, which will display different content based on which pattern card the visitor best matches.