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As our previous blogs have discussed, the potential impact of clickstream analysis on a company’s bottom line is substantial. The ability for businesses to gain insights into consumer behavior though clickstream data is moving from “nice to have” to “need to have”. As online competition increases, any competitive advantage available to a business becomes critical. However, clickstream data is sometimes sensitive because it can contain users’ personal information. The risks involved in utilizing this type of information must be considered as the technology continues to develop.
Potential Issues
Personal privacy is looming as a potential significant issue for this technology. The notion of privacy on the internet today is almost a joke, but businesses, if only for public relations purposes, must be conscientious with how they utilize their clickstream data. With this technology businesses must balance between personalization and privacy.
As the article Privacy and Personalization noted, there is not a clear consensus about who owns user click data. This data represents our behavioral information, and we naturally default to the assumption that it is information we own. However, we are utilizing a website’s services and therefore interacting with the services they own. From their perspective, they own that behavioral information. It’s essentially a “two way street” with both sides seemly owning the data.[1] This ambiguity represents a potential risk for businesses exploring new ways to utilize clickstream data.
Over the years there have been allegations that ISPs are selling customer clickstream data to third party companies.[2] [3] To most consumers, this immediately feels like a violation of privacy. Utilizing data in this way threatens the entire field of clickstream analysis by building a fear of the technology in the mind of the consumer. Individual businesses will have to be wise about how they utilize clickstream information in order to ease their customers’ potential fear of the technology.
Future
The current trend and future thrust in clickstream analysis is improving when the data is available and improving how the data is consumed by the user. A common thread among web analytics vendors is the push to real-time availability of clickstream data. For example, the analytics dashboards from Google[4], Woopra[5], Clicky[6] and Webtrends[7] all give the owner the ability to view the current visitors’ movements through the site as it is happening. This information provides insight into how new content on your site is driving traffic, how well a promotion is performing and what social media content is bringing people to your site.[8] The potential to utilize this real-time information to retain customers and increase conversion rates is an interesting problem. As a previous blog mentioned, accurately predicting what to present to a user based on their current clickstream is a non-trivial prediction problem, but given the advances in this technology and web analytics in general, it seems likely that a truly personalized interaction driven by your clickstream will be a reality.
The other trend in clickstream analysis is data visualization. The amount of data generated by clickstreams makes is difficult to utilize effectively by non-analysts without some significant transformations. Currently, many of the major clickstream analytic tools provide some level of visualization of data such as heat maps and scroll maps. These provide an immediate view of where people click and even how far down the page they scroll. As this technology continues to mature, visualization of the clickstream data will enable further insights into user interaction. Going from server log files to useful data visualization will be critical in supporting the ever changing, highly competitive environment of the web.
Despite the privacy concerns surrounding clickstream data and the challenges surrounding effective use of the data, this technology has incredible potential to shape the web we see. A personalized web, driven by clickstream analysis has the potential to provide a better user experience and improved business performance. The possibilities are endless!
[1] Privacy and Personalization. (August 10, 2007). ReadWrite. Retrieved April 16, 2014. http://readwrite.com/2007/08/10/privacy_and_personalization.
[2] The five levels of ISP evil. (August 12, 2011). Gigaom. Retrieved April 17, 2014. http://gigaom.com/2011/08/12/the-five-levels-of-isp-evil/.
[3] ISPs Selling Clickstream Data, Web Analysts Says. (March 16, 2007). Wired. Retrieved April 17, 2014. http://www.wired.com/2007/03/isps_selling_cl/.
[4] Features. (n.d.) Google Analytics. Retrieved April 16, 2014. http://www.google.com/analytics/features/.
[5] Explore Woopra. (n.d.). Woopra. Retrieved April 16, 2014. https://www.woopra.com/platform/.
[6] Clicky vs the Other Guys. (n.d.). Clicky. Retrieved April 16, 2014. http://clicky.com/compare/.
[7] Webtrends Streams. (n.d.) Webtrends. Retrieved April 16, 2014. http://webtrends.com/solutions/digital-measurement/streams.
[8] Features. (n.d.) Google Analytics. Retrieved April 16, 2014.
[9] Triggers. (n.d.) Woopra. Retrieved April 17, 2014. https://www.woopra.com/platform/triggers/.
[10] CrazyEgg. (n.d.) CrazyEgg. Retrieved April 17, 2014. http://www.crazyegg.com/.