Net dollar per visitor: When Novica.com first set up shop online in1999, Web managers wanted customers to stay on the site for as long aspossible. "Our mantra was: Build it and they will come," saysHachtman. "Now it's about finding the right customer and getting themto check out as quickly as possible."

Novica.com uses customer data gathered by Fireclick, an ASP that helpscompanies track online customer behavior using caching technology tocalculate the amount of money earned per visitor to its site. Theonline retailer uses that metric to compare its different advertisingcampaigns. Hachtman says he would be able to gather that data withoutusing an ASP or software package, but the amount of time and effort itwould take to go through the log files would be prohibitive.

Clickstream: More than a metric, clickstream analysis is a broadmethod for companies to analyze their customers' behavior. A widerange of Web analytics software packages and ASPs offer clickstreamanalysis, which can help a company analyze where customers enter itssite and where they exit.

For example, Web managers at Playboy.com in Chicago recently startedanalyzing clickstream in order to help grow the subscription side ofits business. The site relied on advertising revenue in the past butnow focuses on converting free visitors to paying members of its CyberClub in an effort to reach profitability. Using a service fromWebHancer, Playboy.com can examine where it converts customers andwhere it loses them. Webhancer's "e-business view" captures the enduser's activity rather than focusing on log server data from a smallapplication, loaded on the user's desktop, that tracks his movementson sites around the Web. Companies such as Playboy.com receive reportsand analyses that describe how traffic comes from other sites, whereconversions are failing and how the site compares with those ofcompetitors. "This has been a huge priority because our goal isprofitability before the end of the year," says Phil Jacus, seniormanager for e-commerce and marketing at Playboy.com. Jacus adds thathe expects an ROIROI from Webhancer by the end of the year. Alles zu ROI auf CIO.de