News

Tracking Web Consumers With WebTaggers
Courtney Barry -- 10/2/00
Consumer footprints
on the Web.
In the very near future, by the time a customer arrives at a bookstore's Web site, technology will be able to show the bookseller that the customer has just booked a fare online for a trip to Belize and is surfing the Net to find a book on scuba diving. The bookseller will be able to see the Web sites that the customer has visited during that particular online session and see that the customer considered a book on, say, Amazon. com for $24.95. The technology developed by WebTaggers (www.webtaggers.com) will enable the retailer to know his customer's real-time interests and then to alter simultaneously and dynamically his own Web site and spit out an instant promotion for the same book, perhaps at a better discount--all within the snap, or click, of a finger.
WebTaggers Inc., founded by Austin, Tex., partners Rudy Rouhana, Sean McCullough and his twin brother, Craig McCullough, in July 1999, allows an online bookseller or general retailer to track consumers' real-time interests by offering visiting customers an opt-in toolbar and browser window panel. "By the time a customer actually gets to a store's Web site, the retailer or independent will be able to present highly targeted content to that customer," said Rouhana, WebTaggers' v-p of strategic development.

"The opt-in questionnaire is determined by the e-merchant," explained Poonam Dhawan, WebTaggers' v-p of product management. "The first time a customer signs on, if he should go, for example, to ibooks.com or Barnes & Noble or Amazon, or wh ver our merchants are, he would access a panel that shows up as he's registering for a special promotion. Then we track the customer as he moves along the Web." WebTaggers has plans for its own consumer aggregation, Dhawan added, but she emphasized, "That's not our main focus. We want to be able to help e-merchants deliver highly targeted content based on the consumer's real-time product views across the Web."

WebTaggers' technology offers e-merchants a valuable service, but it also claims to protect consumer privacy. Dhawan explained, "We do not require any personally identifiable information. We track consumers' surfing interests across the Web and use that information to make content recommendations. When consumers choose to tell us about their interests, we use that information as well," she said.

The new company has agreements with customers in the financial, travel and consumer e-merchant categories, and negotiations are underway with several online booksellers and publishing houses.

Barry is a freelance writer in Austin, Tex.