3. Should Robin's company change its site's terms and conditions policy if it implements the new technology? How might this protect the company and its customers?

4. Would this type of data collection be more problematic if it were enabled on a mobile application versus a Web site? What type of additional data could be collected from a mobile application versus a Web site?

Web Recording Everything

The rhythm of the stop-and-go traffic on Robin's drive to the office was lulling her to sleep. She reached over to turn up the air conditioning and then increased the volume of the radio, too. In spite of the trafficand her drowsinessshe enjoyed her commute into Cambridge. The road she took went past Walden Pond and towns like Lexington and Concordsome of the most meaningful landmarks in this part of the country. She loved visiting these historical sites on the weekends, but it felt like forever since she last had had the chance to do so. Her surge of enthusiasm waned, and she refocused on the road.

The past few months of work had been fraught with challenges. She had been working nights, weekends, and holidays to keep up. Her position of user experience manager on the company's e-commerce site was becoming more and more critical as major players like Amazon and other smaller (but growing) competitors continued to fight for market share. Retaining every potential sale was of the utmost importance. Her current charge from higher-level managers was to compile as much data about customer interactions as possible.

The idea was that if she could understand how and why users of the site made decisions to buy certain products or abandon items in a shopping cart, the site could be customized to increase purchases and diminish lost sales. The company could even customize the site for each specific visitor. Most e-commerce sites were doing this type of data collection, analysis, and customization. However, she was actually heading into the city today to meet with a data analytics expert to discuss new strategies for collecting and analyzing customer behavior. She was open to anything new that could help the company get even a shred of competitive advantage over its rivals!

The Devil Is in the Details

Robin parked in the underground garage, made her way up to street level, and began walking along the Charles River to the coffee shop where the meeting had been set. Upon arriving, she pulled open the door and immediately recognized Marianne from her LinkedIn profile. She was sitting in the corner making some final preparations for the meeting. After preliminary introductions and an overview of the company by Robin, Marianne began explaining some of the new types of data collection and analysis solutions that some of her most recent clients had found useful. The first few approaches were things that Robin had already implemented at her company, but Robin perked up as soon Marianne began discussing the next approach.

Marianne explained, "One of the most exciting things about the Big Data movement is the ability not just to capture and store vast troves of data but to do so using new data input streams, things that people have never thought to explore or just didn't have the ability to explore. For example, many Web sites are now storing and analyzing everything that visitors do on the sitenot just pages they visit or the products that they add to a shopping cart, but all of the mouse movements, keystrokes, and scrolling behavior, too.

Marianne continued, "The level of detail that you can capture about site visitors will grow exponentially if you decide to incorporate this functionality into your site. Currently, you can see if someone adds or removes a product from the shopping cart. But the technology I am talking about will allow you to see if a visitor keeps moving their mouse toward specific products but never actually adds those products to the cart. Think about it this wayright now you are only able to read a written transcript of what your users are 'telling' you about their interaction on the site. With this new technology, you will be able to watch a video of their entire 'conversation.' You'll see what they do before and after they 'speak' and see how they are speaking. The best part is that there is very little you have to do to make this happen. All of this data is piped to a third-party company that can do the analysis for you. You would just have to add the data collection piece to your site!"

Data Mine, Not Yours

While Marianne continued in this same vein, Robin couldn't help but let her mind wander to all of the possibilities and implications of this idea. This was not the first time she had heard about analyzing mouse movements to derive meaningful information. She had recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal about researchers who were analyzing mouse movements to uncover emotion. But the more she thought about Marianne's pitch, the more she started to become concerned.

If the data collection tool captures everything users do during a Web session, some very sensitive data (like name, address, and credit card information) would be captured during the checkout process. If all of this data was sent to a third party, it could open up a potential vulnerability for customer data to be compromised. Tracking everything users did felt strange, too. It felt like some kind of breach of privacy, and if nothing else, it was kind of creepy. Finally, if customers caught wind that her company was doing this, it could cause a PR nightmare. Robin took a drink of her coffee and continued thinking about what to do. Maybe she wasn't quite as open to new ideas as she had thought..