Publications

A new generation of Web analytics tools gives companies the business
intelligence to target customers more precisely and improve online
experiences.

Lauren Gibbons Paul profiles how ABC Distributing uses web analytic
tools. The family-owned company began as a direct-mail seller of gifts
and housewares in the 1950s. Rather than mail its catalogs to people's
homes, North Miami, Fla., company sends them to businesses in the
hopes that the workers--mostly female--will pass them around and pool
their orders for such items as bean bag bunnies and car-wash kits to
save on shipping costs. To keep its prices low, the company does not
offer a toll-free line to call or fax. Currently their website
www.abcdistributing.com gets about 100,000 unique visitors per day.

At first, ABC kept track of who uses its Web site with two automated
traffic analysis tools, WebTrends Corp.'s WebTrends and NetGenesis
Corp.'s NetGenesis. But the volume of traffic quickly made these
tools, which count page views, impractical.
ABC turned to a real-time audience analysis service called HitBox
Enterprise from WebSideStory.  Hitbox was successfully installed
and helped to bring additional business.

See Earthweb Datamation, MArch 19, 2001