9 Steps on the Path to Personalization
Jul 15, 2022 • Tracey Barber, VP, Corporate Marketing
See All Our Insights
Webinar: Taxonomy for DXP, Personalization, and AI
Jun 01, 2026 • 2 Minute Read
In Verndale’s recent webinar, Taxonomy for DXP & Personalization, Dawn Bovasso, VP of Content Strategy, Stephanie Saia, Web Personalization & Experience Optimization Practice Lead, and Andrés Hernández, Architect, explored why structured content has become foundational to modern digital experience strategy.
Taxonomy has always been—and continues to be—one of the most important foundations of the end-to-end digital experience.
As organizations invest in personalization, AI-powered search, dynamic content delivery, and connected content ecosystems, they're discovering that content without structure lacks context, consistency, and the ability to scale.
What used to be viewed as a backend organizational exercise is now directly tied to how users discover information, how platforms deliver relevance, and how AI systems understand relationships and meaning.
A strong taxonomy creates the connective tissue between content, products, audiences, topics, and experiences. It allows digital platforms to move beyond static pages and into more intelligent, adaptive experiences, which are the kinds of experiences people increasingly expect by default.
Watch the full Taxonomy for DXP & Personalization webinar to explore the conversation in more detail, and learn more about Verndale’s taxonomy and digital experience strategy capabilities.
Video playback is blocked because cookies are disabled. To watch this video, please enable cookies through the consent banner.
Personalization & Search Depend on Structured Content
That shift is especially visibility in personalization and search.
Personalization is often framed around user behavior and audience data, but those systems still need a structured content foundation underneath them. Without consistent tagging and meaningful relationships between content, personalization becomes difficult to scale, maintain, and govern over time.
The same is true for search.
Whether it’s predictive search, filtering, related content, or AI-assisted discovery, taxonomy helps systems understand context. It improves the ability to surface relevant results, connect related concepts, and guide users toward the information they need in the moment.
In many ways, good search is simply good taxonomy made visible.
And now, as AI becomes central to digital experience strategy, taxonomy is even more important.
AI Needs Context from Your Taxonomy
AI systems rely on structured knowledge to interpret meaning and relationships. The more connected and well-organized a content ecosystem is, the more effectively AI tools can retrieve, recommend, and generate useful experiences from it.
AI may accelerate how content is delivered, but taxonomy is what gives that content shape, context, and meaning.
Why the Foundation Matters More Than Ever
The organizations that will get the most value from AI are the ones that already understand their content. They know how it’s structured, how it connects, and how it should be delivered, because they invested early in creating the structure needed to support it.
That means thinking beyond navigation menus and metadata fields. It means treating taxonomy as a strategic capability that supports personalization, discoverability, governance, and long-term digital flexibility across the entire ecosystem.
Taxonomy has always been foundational to digital experience, but AI and personalization are making its impact far more visible.
As personalization and AI become increasingly important to digital experience success, having the right foundation matters. Verndale's complimentary two-hour Personalization Readiness Assessment helps you evaluate your current capabilities, identify opportunities, and build a roadmap for scalable growth.
Ready to get started? Contact us to learn more about the assessment.