http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20021212S0006
Tracking Online Activity Yields New Insights Dec. 16, 2002 By Roma Nowak This holiday season is shaping up to be a strong one for online sales. Fourth-quarter Web purchases are expected to reach $16.8 billion, an increase of 35% over the same period last year, E-commerce research company BizRate.com says. Yet this buying surge can't be wholly attributed to holiday shoppers. Online sales rose 37% year over year in the third quarter of 2002 to $10 billion, according to BizRate. While this spells good news for businesses looking to augment traditional revenue streams depressed by the sluggish economy, the increase in E-business sales should also benefit companies looking to better serve and profit from customers. Business Web sites, whether or not they're E-commerce enabled, aren't just conduits of marketing messages or order fulfillment. Monitoring technology that tracks the activity of site surfers has transformed company Web sites into customer-knowledge tools. And companies are taking advantage of this capability to better understand customers as well as the preferences of site surfers. .. snip ..
