Fireclick is First to Offer Free Access to Online Benchmarking Data

(I-Newswire) July 28, 2005 - "We believe the Fireclick Index is among the richest and most robust benchmarking tools on the market today," said Ram Srinivasan, Digital River's vice president of analytics and general manager of Fireclick. "By making a modified version of our full index available for use in a public forum, online businesses can go in and not only test drive it, but also gather meaningful data about their e-commerce sites and observe industry trends on a daily basis. They can use this report card format to quickly evaluate how their online stores are performing and then determine if and when to shift their strategies to increase site effectiveness."

Using Fireclick's public index, online businesses can easily compare their sites to the hundreds of sites in the index, to sites in their industry, or to sites in select verticals outside their industry. They also can evaluate their sites' performances based on a variety of e-commerce site metrics, including average order size, first time and repeat customer conversion rates, cart abandonment rates and average session length. The tool also provides benchmarking information for search engine, e-mail and affiliate marketing. The data available through Fireclick's public index represents a subset of the information accessible to clients who purchase Fireclick's full index.

Originally released in 2003, the full version of the Fireclick Index includes an even richer feature set and more exhaustive, statistical measures. The full index gives companies a more complete picture of how well their online businesses are operating by enabling them to measure their performance against more than 30 key metrics - from traffic and revenue to site performance and campaign effectiveness. These metrics are tracked across more than eight different industry segments and compiled from the live statistics of participating Fireclick clients. The data is treated anonymously, and participation is voluntary.

"The industry benchmarks available through the Fireclick Index help us drive our traffic, sales and conversion rate goals every quarter," said Brendon Perero, CTO and director of Internet operations of NutriSystem, Inc. "As marketing costs continue to rise, it is becoming increasingly important to do regular reality checks with the Fireclick Index and evaluate the conversion rates and return-on-investment other peers are achieving with their e-mail, keyword and affiliate programs. We use this data to adjust our programs accordingly." Founded in 1972, NutriSystem is a leading provider of weight management products and services.

About Fireclick, Inc.
Fireclick, a wholly owned subsidiary of Digital River, Inc., provides a comprehensive Web analytics solution that offers online businesses real-time, actionable information about their customers. The sophisticated data delivered by the application service can be used to improve operating results, create a better user experience, and increase site traffic, revenues and profits. For more information, visit www.fireclick.com.

About Digital River, Inc.
Digital River, Inc., a global leader in e-commerce outsourcing, builds and manages online businesses for more than 40,000 software publishers, manufacturers, distributors and online retailers. Its multi-channel e-commerce solution, which supports both direct and indirect sales, is designed to help companies of all sizes maximize online revenues as well as reduce the costs and risks of running an e-commerce operation. The company's comprehensive platform offers site development and hosting, order management, fraud prevention, export controls, tax management, physical and digital product fulfillment, multi-lingual customer service, advanced reporting and strategic marketing services.

Founded in 1994, Digital River is headquartered in Minneapolis with offices in major U.S. and European cities. For more details about Digital River, visit the corporate Web site at www.digitalriver.com or call 952-253-1234.

Digital River is a registered trademark of Digital River, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks, registrations or copyrights of their respective owners.

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