A global online market research firm monitors the daily online behavior of more than 10 million internet users, tracking what, when and how they search.

In the past, businesses relied solely on surveys to understand consumer behavior, but examining actual behavior is much more insightful than asking people how they behave. To market effectively today, you have to understand how your potential customers are behaving online.

So how are they behaving? Data often reveals that people think about things earlier and in slightly different ways than we think they do. As an entrepreneur, you want to know this because you want to be in front of consumers then. Boutiques typically start marketing to prom dress buyers in March, yet data shows that buyers start shopping as early as January. Definitely, they should start earlier.

Pay close attention to your own site-centric data, search logs and click streams.

by Lindsay Holloway