Analyzing clickstreams using subsessions

Abstract

Analyzing data obtained from web server logs, so-called "clickstreams", is rapidly becoming one of the most important activities for companies in any sector as most businesses become ebusinesses. Clickstream analysis can reveal usage patterns on the company's web site and give a highly improved understanding of customer behavior. This understanding can then be utilized for improving customer satisfaction with the web site and the company in general, yielding a huge business advantage. In this paper, we present the results of a clickstream analysis project at a large Danish mortgage provider. The paper first describes clickstream data and its usefulness, then it introduces the questions that the company wanted answered in the project. One of the major problems in clickstream analysis is sequences of clicks, which are difficult to handle using normal techniques. This problem is handled by introducing the concept of subsessions, which captures sequences of clicks explicitly. Techniques for overcoming the potential explosion in the number of subsessions and for filtering out unnecessary web requests are presented and the effectiveness of the techniques is evaluated. The proposed approach has been successfully implemented and tested and is currently being integrated in the company's web system architecture.