Analyzing the footsteps of your customers

As on-line presence becomes very important in today’s e-commerce age, companies focus on two major aspects: on the one hand they are interested in optimizing their web site design to meet the needs of their customers, on the other hand they aim at user profiling to find out who visits their web site. Analyzing generated and collected data in this context is crucial as the competition is only one mouse click away. This paper describes a case study that was carried out by ASK|net together with SAS Institute Germany with the aim to improve web site presence and gain knowledge about users. First, we give an introduction of the data that is essential to any company for these types of analyses to optimize on-line presence. Then, the different phases and the results of the analyses of the case study are described in detail. In the conclusion, an outlook on future developments to efficiently use the results will be given. 1 SAS Institute GmbH, Heidelberg, Germany Christiane.Theusinger@ger.sas.com 2 SAS Institute GmbH, Heidelberg, Germany Klaus-Peter.Huber@ger.sas.com