For many companies, competitiveness in e-commerce requires a successful presence on the web. Web sites are used to establish the company's image, to promote and sell goods and to provide customer support. The success of a web site affects and reflects directly the success of the company in the electronic market. In this study, we propose a methodology to improve the "success" of web sites, based on the exploitation of navigation pattern discovery. In particular, we present a theory, in which success is modelled on the basis of the navigation behaviour of the site's users. We then exploit WUM, a navigation pattern discovery miner, to study how the success of a site is reflected in the users' behaviour. With WUM we measure the success of a site's components and obtain concrete indications of how the site should be improved. We report on our first experiments with an online catalog, the success of which we have studied. Our mining analysis has shown very promising results, on the basis of which the site is currently undergoing concrete improvements.

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Retailers with multiple distribution channels are increasingly gaining market shares compared to Internet-only retailers. However, a lack of research explaining consumers' purchasing behavior in a multi-channel context can be identified.This paper discusses examples of multi-channel strategies and describes in detail the case of an online retailer who aims at measuring the interrelation between the sales channel Internet and a physical branch network. Based on the analysis of the retailer's transaction data and a literature review, we derive hypotheses to explain consumer purchasing behavior. A questionnaire is presented to further test the hypotheses.

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