GIST: A Model for Design and Management of Content and Interactivity of Customer-Centric Web Sites

Author Biographies Terri Albert's research and teaching focus is e-business marketing. She has multiple conference papers and publications in the application of technology in e-business. Dr. Albert has been teaching Digital Marketing for seven years and has developed and conducted several Internet conferences for the business and academic communities. Technology and its implications for marketing, legal, and information management were the focus of the conferences. Additionally, she co-founded an e-business outreach program with the purpose of customizing e-business strategies for business partners. This has enhanced her knowledge of the technology impact on companies' marketing strategies as well as provided an intellectual foundation for scholarly works. One of the partnerships led to her involvement with the GE e-business Think Tank (edgelab) of which she is the marketing faculty representative. research interests are in the areas of Internet technologies and electronic commerce, design and evaluation of models for e-business, online auctions, database recovery and security, computer networking and technology. Electronic Commerce, among others. He received prestigious NSF CAREER award for his research in Online Auctions in 2001. His current research and teaching interest are in the area of economic modeling and analysis of electronic commerce.. He serves on the editorial boards of ISR, DSS and Brazilian Electronic Journal of Economics. ABSTRACT Customer-centric web-based systems, such as e-commerce web sites, or sites that support Customer Relationship Management (CRM) activities, are themselves information systems, but their design and maintenance need to follow vastly different approaches from the traditional systems lifecycle approach. Based on marketing frameworks that are applicable to the online world, we develop a model to guide the design and the continuous management of such sites. The model makes extensive use of current technologies for tracking the customers and their behaviors, and combines elements of data mining and statistical analyses. A case study based on a financial services website is used to provide a preliminary validation of the GIST approach. The case study showed considerable measured improvement in the effectiveness of the company's web site. In addition, it also highlighted an important feature of the GIST model: the identification of previously unknown or unexpected segments of visitors. This finding can lead to promising new business opportunities.