Creating business value using click stream analysis: a study of techniques and application

Abstract

The recent decade has witnessed a tremendous growth in web based businesses. E-commerce businesses capture large amounts of data through their web pages. The analysis of this data can provide insights on the working of the business and the customer behavior. These insights enhance the value to the business and provide a great user experience on the website. What is becoming more important on the internet is the ability of the search engine to identify and list the website. If the search engine finds the right website it facilitates the user to identify the right data quickly and easily. If a user is not successful in identifying the required data easily in the website, he/she can exit the site. Thus a poorly organized website is of no value to the user if he/she is unable to find the data they need. The secret of successful website lies in its ability to cater to user needs and should easily appear in the search engines. Web analytics retrieves data from websites and plays an important role in providing insights to understand the behavior of customers, unravel the problems that exist, and solve them so as to improve profitability and usability of the website. This project studies various clickstream analysis techniques and the application of these techniques to web based businesses. Clickstream data fromJeevanSaathi.com is used as a case study to analyze and gain insights into the nature of the business and unravel some of the problems that may exist. The analysis has been done based on appropriate techniques for this type of online business and some recommendations are provided to improve the business.