Analytics

When e-commerce was hatched back in the '90s, it would have lived for a while without Web analytics, but not for long. It would have died a cruel death in its nest, hungrily watching as bigger, more traditional channels ate up all the nurturing dollars brought to the nest by its parent company -- ex...

In the midst of the U.S. economic crisis, cautious spending and downsizing have left the retail industry in dire straits. The Commerce department recently reported that retail sales continued to fall in March -- down 1.1 percent from February's sales figures. March 2009 saw a 9 percent decline compa...

The report came out right before the economy nose-dived, before ad revenues started to shrink, before even online display advertising started feeling the recession's pinch. A February 2007 report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations -- the keepers of media buying/selling trends and standards for pu...

It's official: Mobile is moving into the mainstream. With the ever-growing proliferation of devices offering full Internet browsing access, more and more consumers are interacting -- and purchasing -- on the Web via their device of choice. In fact, according to an October 2008 Forrester Research rep...

With budgets getting tighter than ever, small-business owners have to make the best use of every penny they can to stay ahead of the game. While you might think you have a first-class Web site that seems to be attracting lots of visitors, how do you really know if it's working? Is it delivering the ...

For a long time, small businesses were reluctant to embrace the latest in search engine marketing and other online advertising tactics. The SEM industry was unable to deliver to this group of typically local-interest, cost-conscious companies what they wanted the most: a means to assess how their in...

As e-commerce gets more sophisticated and consumer expectations continue to rise, many retailers are considering prettying up their existing Web sites with improved graphics or new features in order to make them more attractive to consumers. While such enhancements can make your site more appealing ...

Marketers often ignore a critical measurement -- customer attitudes and emotions -- when examining customer behavior. This critical measurement can hold the key to insights that can drive the best kind of marketing -- presenting the right message and offer to the right people at the right time. Atti...

Today's liquidity crunch is a far-reaching conundrum causing the global credit markets to react in an irrational and volatile way. All granters of credit are under immense pressure, as the market continues to point its gnarled finger at the mortgage industry as the chief culprit for the market's dis...

You've launched an online campaign. Now how do you measure its success? Despite all the data that can be sliced, diced, scrutinized and parsed, the process of tracking what's working -- and what isn't -- doesn't have to be overly complicated. If you set a clear, reasonable objective and have a syste...

When's the last time you heard an online retailer complain that their banner ads were too well targeted? How about an online publisher lamenting the torrent of accurate user data they were able to capture, or for that matter a user who just wanted more of the ads they were getting to be irrelevant t...