The UK's biggest catalogue sales firm, JD Williams, is investing
in technology to allow it to track its customers in real time as
they browse its website.
The move will the firm to identify what interests each customer
and to send them special offers and alerts that could encourage
them to buy - potentially while they are still on-line.
JD Williams has upgraded its existing Teradata datawarehouse and
customer relationship managmeent
system to run the new technology, following a growth increase
its online sales.
It plans to use a data collection tool from Speed-Trap, to
provide detailed feedback on each customers behaviour.
It plans to store the data in its Teradata Active Enterprise
data warehouse and to integrate it with existing customer profiles
and analysis.
JD Williams will use the results in near real-time to send
messages to the customers, possibly while they are still on the
site.
These messages might contain offers and alerts tailored to
address the user's interests and behaviours while they are on-line
and increase the chance of them buying something.
JD Williams' CIO Neil McGowan said the new system "came at a
perfect "time" for the company, just as online orders have started
to overtake telephone orders for the first time.
JD Williams is a long-term Teradata user. The web-based
information will now allow it to monitor and moderate customer
inteactions across all its sales channels.
"The addition of detailed web browsing data from Speed-Trap is a
critical input to allow us to manage our two
million customer relationships holistically," McGowan said.
The decision follows a month-long pilot. JD Williams was
impressed by the level of user behaviour detail Speed-Trap
delivered. This even down to mouse movements, said Speed-Trap
co-founder Malcolm Duckett.