Merchandising is well understood in the real world, but online it is hard to find a balance between promoting products and annoying Web site visitors. The problems are due to the limited space available on a Web page for merchandising and the need to get as much useful information into the consumer’s brain as possible as quick as possible.

One of the slickest solutions I’ve seen to date comes from Chitika. In case you’re wondering about the name, Chitika “means ‘in a snap’ in the South Indian language Telugu.”

Chitika provides several services but the one that caught my eye was eMiniMalls. EMiniMalls provide a very tightly structured selection of products along with a description, best pricing, product reviews, and a search feature in multiple formats.

The look and feel of eMiniMalls is very slick. When you click on a product from the group provided you get a slide and enlargement of the selected product image, and a corresponding slide and reduction of the previously selected product.

Crucial to the site owner, all of the user’s interaction with each eMiniMall is tracked, providing valuable intelligence about user behavior and interests.

To use eMiniMalls there is no setup or hosting fee, just an application to and acceptance by Chitika. You are paid a revenue share based upon your user clicks. Adding eMiniMalls to a site simply requires adding a few lines of JavaScript.

EMiniMalls can also be implemented within a blog and across multiple sites. Site owners are paid via PayPal (increments of $10) or by check (increments of $50).

As a means of implementing nonintrusive Web site merchandising Chitika’s eMiniMalls service is one of the slickest and best organized solutions I’ve seen.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.