Big retailer Sears Holdings Corp. is turning its flagship Web site, Sears.com, into a shopping site that could offer more merchandise, more categories and more features than its legendary Big Book. In the past few months, Sears has added more than 250,000 music offerings, movies and video games to the site; opened an online software boutique for downloading programs for taxes, graphics, finances and computer security; and recently began selling books online for the first time.

The Web analytics industry has been steadily moving away from analyzing Web site data for its own sake and moving toward marketing optimization. This "big picture" approach means Web analytics aren't just about clickthroughs and page views. They're a window into the hearts and minds of the marketplace - a kind of market research that has never been available before.

Online marketers are driven by the necessity of maximizing their Web traffic to bring in the revenues they need to fuel the successes of their businesses. The smartest ones invest a lot of time and effort designing and analyzing campaigns that pull customers through a funnel that encourages them to spend more time on the site and buy more of the products or services that are being promoted. Even a few extra seconds on the site by each visitor can add up to higher profits at the end of each month that translate into serious money at the end of the year.