What advice would you give to someone trying to segment by contact list membership?

if I created a full fledge website I would segment my customer based on their preference how much time they have spent on my website and what type of products they like nowadays all websites want you to create an account I will look for what type of product they are liking this as a whole will make me , stock that type of product giving good data points and if i have something similar i can sell it to them and the time factor will come in equatation showing us if our regulars are interested in our business or the new decisions we are implementing are showing tangible results or not