Other firms with e-commerce sites fail to provide any feedback mechanism to let them know how many hits they get or how effective their site is. And simply because they lack such a mechanism, it is not uncommon for companies to believe that their experiments in e-commerce and electronic marketing have failed.
Charles Nichols, marketing manager of software supplier Business Objects, says, “Looking at Web sites is now part of the procurement and decision-making process for some customers, but then they will go to a reseller or shop to actually make the purchase. But you need to know how many visit and are influenced by the Web site.”
He suggests one way of finding out is to give a unique phone number on
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