Sundance Catalog Co. will begin tracking visitors to its e-commerce site in an attempt to analyze customer needs and where marketing efforts should be spent.
The decision comes five years after the company launched its Web site, www.sundancecatalog.com. At that time the site's primary purpose was to provide customer service, said Jeff Wogoman, Internet manager at Sundance, Salt Lake City.
Coremetrics Inc., San Francisco, an e-marketing intelligence application service provider, was contracted to provide its eLuminate service for Sundance. The software tracks and analyzes online consumer behavior. Customer acquisition costs can be lowered by determining marketing return on investments and online content. Coremetrics is in the process of installing the software and data collection should begin this month.
The site previously provided consumers with information such as inventory levels, but as the number of people going online to make purchases has increased, it is becoming more of a revenue source, Wogoman said.
“The main motivation is to try to help [us] understand how people are navigating through our site — what they look at versus what they buy [and] what they're browsing versus what their buying preferences are,” Wogoman said.
The Sundance catalog features clothing, jewelry and home décor items with the look of the American West. Its demographics are mainly women, ages 35 to 50.
“We're looking at, 'Does this person who clicks on furniture have the propensity to buy shoes, or is there a relationship between certain categories?' ” Wogoman asked. “It's all in an effort to putting the most relevant data online.”
Dan Dement, director of communications at Coremetrics, said eLuminate will track visitors from the time they visit the site until a transaction is completed.
Earlier this year, Coremetrics was named in a report issued by Interhack Corp., Columbus, OH, that accused Toysrus.com, Babiesrus.com, Lucy.com and Fusion.com of sharing identifiable customer information with the ASP in violation of the sites' privacy policies.
Two class-action lawsuits were filed against Toysrus.com in U.S. District Courts in California and New Jersey. Toysrus.com, Paramus, NJ, has since ended its relationship with Coremetrics.
“The privacy issues [related to] that were a great opportunity to clarify exactly what our business model is,” Dement said. “The claims from Interhack as well as the suit against Coremetrics [have] been based upon a misunderstanding of our actual service and we believe that they have no merit whatsoever and we'll definitely defend ourselves.”
