One of the things that is hard with any site, but especially an ecommerce site, is working out what people do on your site. Good statistics go a long way, and usability studies are great – but expensive and time consuming. One tool I’ve used a few times recently and am in fact using on my own site is Crazy Egg. They have a really neat tracking tool which has the nicest looking and easiest to use reports I’ve seen from any tracking tool. Check out their site and look at some of the sample reports. It’s really as easy and cool as it looks, no catches. For smaller/lower traffic sites, it’s free as well! I put it on an ecommerce site I was working with and found out all sorts of information. I managed to get rid of a couple of elements that almost no one was using and improved some bits not getting used much that I wanted to get used. If there’s another way to get high quality data with that little effort and cost, let me know about it!

And, I have no connection with CrazyEgg, just a happy user.