May 2001

BY DARA MIRSKY, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, TMCnet.com

When you hear talk of e-CRM (electronic customer relationship management) or online CRM, you probably think of solutions that enable companies to offer customer support via their Web sites. You think of text chat, click-to-call buttons or even basic e-mail support. You probably dont think of boosting CRM by tapping into your Web site log files.

Web intelligence, e-customer analysis, visitor relationship management and analytic CRM are just a few of the terms being bandied about to describe the process of mining data about Web site visitors in order to offer better service. There are roughly two types of data: those which are given by your customers voluntarily, such as their name and address when they place an order or send a request of more information; and those which are given involuntarily, such as the path a user follows as he or she moves through your Web site, or the way in which the shopper found your site (through a search engine, for example). It's the latter type of data that is just now gaining popularity as an excellent method for understanding your online customers better. One way to mine the data from your site visitors is by analyzing your Web site's log files.

What Is A Log File?
Anytime a browsing individual arrives on your Web site, a line of data is entered into a log file, which normally resides on your Web server. Your Web site's log files contain millions of lines of data, recording each move a visitor makes on your site. If you require visitors to register to use your site, or you set cookies for your visitors, you'll be able to track repeat visitors and even associate log file data with a specific customer. If you don't use either of these identifying actions, you will still be able to mine a tremendous amount of data about visitors to your site as an aggregate, anonymous population.

At a minimum, log files can tell you what company or ISP your potential customer is coming from, including his or her geographic area. They can also tell you the amount of time the visitor spent on your site and the number of pages viewed in that time.

How did a visitor find your site in the first place? Your log files can tell you that, too. They'll let you know whether a visitor did a search on Google (and what keywords they used that led them to you), or whether they followed a link in an industry publication such as TMCnet.com. Log files can also tell you if visitors arrived at your site as a result of a Web or e-mail advertising campaign you are running.

In addition, you can identify which pages your Web site visitors are viewing the most, what paths they are taking within your site and how long they are spending on each page they visit. These patterns are called a clickstream, and provide an overview of visitor behavior on your site.

Analyzing The Data
Of course, simply having access to this wealth of data won't do you much good. As I mentioned, your log files contain millions of records, and analyzing them requires a solution developed specifically for the task. There are many free services that will provide you with a very basic analysis of your log files (such as www.livestat.com or www.sitemeter.com), but these are generally inadequate for a business site looking to improve CRM.

There are numerous software-based and hosted solutions that will analyze your Web site visitor data and provide reports for you. Solutions for visitor analysis vary greatly in scope (depending on the size and complexity of your Web site), functionality and cost. The following four companies are just a sample of the solutions in this market.

NetGenesis' (www.netgen.com) NetGenesis 5 is a robust solution targeted toward Fortune 500 companies. NetGenesis can handle up to 200 million hits per day. You can view your reports from anywhere via a Web-based interface.

Sane Solutions' (www.sane.com) NetTracker 5.0 eBusiness Edition is server-based log file analysis software, which means you can skip downloading your log files locally (large, heavily trafficked sites may have log files on the order of hundreds of gigabytes, so this saves bandwidth and resources).

WebSideStory's (www.websidestory.com) HitBox Enterprise is a pure-play application service provider (ASP). There is no software involved on the client side, and you simply access your Web traffic reports in real-time, via a Web browser interface.

WebTrends' (www.webtrends.com) CommerceTrends platform is just one of the company's offerings. The CommerceTrends Reporting Server offers more than 350 reports based on your log files. WebTrends also has a hosted version of its visitor relationship management solution, called WebTrendsLive.

Beyond Log Files
Log file analysis, on its own, is one of the most elementary ways to gather information about visitor activity on your Web site. What's the next step after tapping your Web site log files? Integrating that information with the customer data you have from other sources. NetTracker, for example, makes it easy to combine your Web site log files with other legacy data in your enterprise, by integrating with products from major players such as MicroStrategy (www.microstrategy.com), E.piphany (www.epiphany.com) and Cognos (www.cognos.com). Most major solutions offer similar functionality.

The definition of eCRM is expanding. Start paying attention to the data trails your Web site visitors leave behind, and you'll be set to increase your sales and customer satisfaction right along with the growing Web traffic analysis market.

The author may be contacted at dmirsky@tmcnet.com.

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