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There is perhaps no challenge greater than tracking offline impact of your online presence (campaigns or other activity). It is perhaps one of the last few complex nuts left to crack. Why? Because it is hard. Not impossible. Just hard. And for now it is equal parts quantitative, qualitative and faith.

We all want to know which sites, search engines and keywords are sending us traffic. But what about direct type in traffic? When people access your site URL by typing it in from memory, it can be a great indicator of your brand preference, success of your offline and online marketing efforts and customer satisfaction. If you're smart and lucky, you named your site your main-keyword-dot-com and you get search traffic from visitors who use their address bars as search engines. For example, a search on "reusable bags" sends you automatically to "reusablebags.com" which sells…you got it, reusable bags.

Despite the convenience of shopping online, many people still use the web only to research products to purchase offline. Multi-channel retailers with both physical stores and online stores have a leg up on pure-plays when it comes to serving and converting these buyers. Circuit City is an example of a retailer that's in tune with what customers want and expect from the cross-channel experience, offering customer service features that leverage its competitive advantage: