Capability 4 — account / state: the site remembers who the visitor is and what they have done (login, saved items, order history, progress) so returning visitors resume rather than restart

Capability: The site remembers who the visitor is and what they have done — login, saved items, order history, progress through a task — so a returning visitor resumes rather than restarts.

The defining test: if you log out and back in, the site shows you something different from what a brand-new visitor sees.

Source: Industry-consensus definitional framing.

Confidence: Industry-consensus (definitional).

Caveat — evidence base thin for outcomes: like Capability 2 — interactive functionality: the visitor supplies input and the site returns a computed or looked-up result (calculator, quote, search, booking, configurator), there is no clean primary dataset tying account / state specifically to conversion or retention for general SMB marketing websites (GAP — no clean, current, primary dataset ties interactive features (calculators, booking, account state) specifically to conversion / retention for general SMB marketing websites). The value case rests on customer-experience / utility logic rather than search-visibility data.

Business types most served: retailers (cart, order history, returns), service businesses with repeat engagement (portal-based clients, project status), B2B with ongoing relationships (renewals, usage dashboards).

Why this matters for Candid: The capability with the highest implementation cost and the strongest lock-in once a client adopts it — recommend deliberately, not reflexively.