Hot Clicks! A Refresher on Clickstream Analysis

Hot Clicks! A Refresher on Clickstream Analysis: "One of our clients, a general merchandise retailer who has joined the e-tailing ranks, wants its Web site to be as “sticky” as possible and has begun analyzing clickstream data to surmise why customers might leave the site prematurely. The company has honed in on the value of abandoned shopping carts. When a customer leaves the site in the midst of a shopping trip, whatever the reason, the company looks to see what products were in the cart. The data is then compared with similar data from other abandoned carts to examine:

- How much revenue was represented by the abandoned carts? In other words, how much money did we lose by this customer leaving early?
- Whether the products in the cart were high-profit items or loss leaders.
- If the same products were found in other abandoned carts.
- How large were the carts that were deserted, including a rolling calculation of the average number of products in an abandoned cart?
- Whether the total bill for the abandoned carts consistently fell within a certain dollar range.

The result of this analysis can trigger some interesting theories. For instance, none of the products in the cart was appealing enough to a particular customer to motivate him to continue shopping. Or the customer was put off by frequent inquiries asking him whether he was ready to check out. Or that, at a particular dollar total, the customer thought better of the entire shopping trip and bailed. Or that a number or mix of products in a cart reminded the customer of another site that might offer a steeper discount for similar purchases. "