A new report by Placed, Moms in the Grocery Aisle, provides detailed data about Moms and their grocery shopping behavior. The information is derived from mobile survey questions and their ability to gather location based information directly from user smartphones. 

Key insights include:

• Mothers were 26% less likely to visit specialty grocers Trader Joe’s and 41% less likely to visit Whole Foods, while both grocers slightly over indexed for females without children.
  
• Mothers were 11% more likely to access coupons on their smartphone prior to grocery shopping instead of while in store.
  
• Just 5% of smartphone couponing moms prefer to access CPG sites while in stores, with coupon and grocer websites preferences 5 times larger.
  

Although the white paper is useful for grocers in particular, the information provides valuable insights for anyone needing research on smartphone usage, couponing, grocery shopping and retail behavior.

Robbin Block is a marketing strategist with more than 25 years of experience helping entrepreneurs reach their potential. She's teaching an introductory class about building websites in Seattle on February 20, 2014.

Lexity which Yahoo took over and renamed "Yahoo Commerce Central" in mid-September can track your customers in real time, providing insightful charts and historical traffic information. Plus it lets you chat instantly with your online customers. 

The service supports more than 30 ecommerce platforms, including Foxycart, Magento, BigCommerce and more. Installation depends on the platform you're using, but you basically add a snippet of code they provide.

The live website insights tool is free, but of course, they'll try to sell you on the other apps they have -- most of them for a monthly fee. When you sign up, you'll need to provide a credit card, which they say makes adding apps easier (for whom?). Some message boards are showing installation errors, but the app is generally getting good marks.

Scarborough Research offers an interactive way to see how cities compare on their "We Know the Locals" website. There are hundreds of data points, including demographics, business to business, traveling, coffeehouse patrons and more.