  For many companies, competitiveness in e-commerce requires a successful
presence on the web. Web sites are used to establish the company's image, to
promote and sell goods and to provide customer support. The success of a web
site affects and reflects directly the success of the company in the electronic
market. In this study, we propose a methodology to improve the ``success'' of
web sites, based on the exploitation of navigation pattern discovery. In
particular, we present a theory, in which success is modelled on the basis of
the navigation behaviour of the site's users. We then exploit WUM, a navigation
pattern discovery miner, to study how the success of a site is reflected in the
users' behaviour. With WUM we measure the success of a site's components and
obtain concrete indications of how the site should be improved. We report on
our first experiments with an online catalog, the success of which we have
studied. Our mining analysis has shown very promising results, on the basis of
which the site is currently undergoing concrete improvements.

Machine Learning;Databases