During the last two articles, we looked at intranets as a web-based tool to enhance productivity and profit. This month, I would like to introduce you to another web tool that integrates data and text mining within a website - known as Data Mining. Data mining enhances a website with intelligent behaviour - such as suggesting related links, or recommending new products to the consumer.

Learn more about your customers - Every time a person clicks onto a page at your website, information about that 'click' is stored at the website and can be captured into a database. Data Mining helps you learn about your viewers interests by collecting and analysing this information generated by activity at your website, such as click-through data, search requests, and cookies. Data mining also allows you to use this information to review your website content against its relevance to the viewer's interests.

Increase the value of visit to your website - By analysing the site statistics in more detail, it is possible to predict information a viewer might be interested in, and what products they might consider purchasing. For example, if you had a member based wine club website, then when a viewer logs into the site, you could greet them personally and highlight products that best 'fits' their profile and hence potentially increase your future sales.

Improve the viewers experience at the website - A sound combination of data and text mining techniques can help determine viewer interests - early in the process of the viewer's interaction with the website. This allows the website to act interactively and proactively and deliver the most relevant customised resources to the visitor. By increasing customer satisfaction, viewers are kept at your site longer and increase loyalty to your brand.

What type of viewers do you get? - Do you know the type of person who visits your website? A person ready to spend money with you, a person who is genuinely interested in finding out more about your products or services or someone who is on the lookout for website freebies only. All these viewers come through a single lane to your website and are in a common queue for your website resources. Can you tell them apart? It's imperative that you are able to.

Collect information in new ways - Data mining can determine the viewers preferences (at virtually no cost) based on the content that the viewer has been browsing. Of course data mining is designed to work hand-in-hand with your privacy management system, ensuring and allowing you to collect valuable data while respecting the privacy of your visitors.

By segregating your least important prospects and subtracting their contribution from the overall picture of the site navigation then what is left represents the real quality of your website. Ultimately this is the picture that can help you really improve your bottom line.