This blog has moved

Dear reader,

After this blog took off as I’ve never expected , I decided to run the blog on the originial URL.

Please visit www.webanalyticsbook.com to view the newest postings and feel free to update your RSS Feed.

Thanks again for your support! Thanks to all magazines that quoted this site within the last 5 months.

WebTrends Acquires ClickShift

WebTrends Inc announced today its acquisition of ClickShift, an innovator in online advertising optimization. The acquisition brings leading edge technology and deep industry expertise to WebTrends. Rodkin and Chang, who previously founded Flyswat, subsequently acquired by NBCi, will continue to lead the team out of its current San Bruno, Calif. facility. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Interesting move of Webtrends. Clickshift recently figured out that cross-selling is an important part of PPC traffic. This means that an optimized landing page for a single product is often not the most efficient way to convert traffic. Funny thing is that Google Adwords introduced the Quality Score, which kind of requires the opposite, namely the landing page optimization for a single product. Maybe Yahoo with their new Panama rollout will do it better

New Product: WebSideStory Publish 4.0

WebSideStory enters the CMS market. Publish 4.0, an on-demand web content management solution that enables marketers to automatically drive web site content placement based on visitor behavior captured in HBX Analytics. This integrated capability allows marketers to easily display the most popular and engaging content possible, thereby increasing visitor loyalty, web site stickiness, customer satisfaction, and even lead generation.

 

SEMDirector and WebSideStory Partner

SEMDirector Inc.  and WebSideStory Inc. today announced the creation of a formal partnership. By integrating SEMDirector’s portfolio of search marketing automation products with WebSideStory HBX Analytics, the two organizations will offer customers a robust solution to drive improvements in search engine marketing and online advertising.

WebTrends Responds to NetRatings’ Patent Infringement Litigation

WebTrends Inc responded to a lawsuit recently filed by NetRatings, Inc. in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon. NetRatings, which has filed similar lawsuits against competing vendors over the past two years, filed a lawsuit against WebTrends alleging infringement of several patents owned by NetRatings. WebTrends has reviewed the claims and believes they lack merit. WebTrends intends to defend itself vigorously against the complaint.

“As the innovator and technology leader in web analytics, WebTrends is serious about its intellectual property rights,” said Greg Drew, CEO and president of WebTrends Inc. “We firmly believe these claims have no merit. In addition, as the pioneer in this industry, WebTrends has several issued U.S. patents of its own in the web analytics space. We are currently reviewing all of our legal options and will aggressively defend our position.”

 All the big 5 vendors develop more and more similar features and it was a question of time until one sues another. It will be interesting to see how this case will influence the webanalytics industry

WebSideStory launches Active Browsing

WebSideStory announced the industry’s firstCommercially available Ajax-enabled site search solution. This capability, Called Active Browsing, is an extended service of WebSideStory Search and enables any e-commerce site to integrate one of Web 2.0’s enabling technologies, Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), into their product search results. The result is greatly enhanced speed and interactivity, and an improved customer shopping experience in which shoppers are able to engage in “clickless browsing” the ability to preview additional product facets and “more like this” categories just by rolling their mouse over specific search results.

Last year, The Gap received industry wide attention for spending a reported US$10 million to deliver this same type of “quick look”product functionality to its web site as part of a major Ajax-enabled redesign. Active Browsing is available from WebSideStory at a fraction of this cost and can deliver value for any online business model. Active Browsing is currently live on Jockey.com. “When you make online shopping faster, easier, you create a morepersuasive experience, that leads to better conversions and more loyalcustomers,” said Bryan Eisenberg, the co-founder of Future Now, Inc., a NewYork City marketing firm, and the author of two New York Times best-sellingbusiness books, Call to Action and Waiting For Your Cat to Bark? “ActiveBrowsing is demonstrably better than virtually every e-tailer’s currentoffering.”

Active Browsing works by transforming site search into a highlyinteractive application that accesses server data optimally, and allows foruser interface innovations such as “bubbles” that overlay the page to providemore information and navigation choices. This enables visitors to speedthrough product search results and related facets — color, size, gender,etc. — without having to reload the page every time. Active Browsing lays the foundation for additional product capabilities that will take sitesearch to whole new levels of interactivity, including more intuitiveinteraction conventions and user interfaces. Advanced Ajax implementations attravel sites like Kayak.com are credited with having positive impacts on bothuser experience and market share. Hitwise, an online competitive service,recently reported that Kayak.com’s market share has surged in the last sixmonths — an increase that one travel industry analyst attributed to the useof Ajax. Google Maps is another popular example of Ajax in action.”Active Browsing is incredible,” said Susan Aldrich, a senior vicepresident at Patricia Seybold Group and one of the top site search analystsin the industry. “With many e-commerce sites, I almost get motion sicknesshaving to click back and forth between different products and facets. Notwith Active Browsing. It enables you to get key merchandising informationwhile staying focused and engaged on the product. I think it’s fair to saythat a majority of shoppers will be clamoring for this type of experiencewithin the next year. With Active Browsing, WebSideStory adds yet anothervaluable innovation to its solutions.”

Coremetrics 2007

Coremetrics is launching a comprehensive range of tools which enable organizations to implement more scientific, data-driven and proactive online marketing programs. Coremetrics 2007 builds on Coremetrics’ robust web analytics platform, enabling marketers to turn granular analytical data into clear marketing activity plans instantly.

Coremetrics Online Analytics Enhancements

Coremetrics 2007 adds significant new capabilities for companies in the travel, financial services and content delivery spaces, including:

• Action Ready Reports – an executive-level set of reports available in an automated and easy-to-distribute Microsoft Excel notebook format, viewable on or offline. Action Ready Reports extend the reach of the Coremetrics platform to those without direct access to the Coremetrics interface.

• Conversion Events – a set of reports that track the relative value of potentially thousands of discrete events that represent non-commerce related website goals, such as downloading information, registering for a newsletter or signing up for a gift registry. For example, a media website may value the completion a subscription twice as much as a visitor interacting with a game. The new Conversion Events functionality enables organizations to assess the performance of various content or marketing programs in achieving their goals.

• Dimensions Report – analyzes details surrounding online bookings, enabling travel providers to track information such as the website where the booking originated, the relative success of different brands or geographies, and attributes such as room size or seat classification. The Dimensions Report can also be tailored to meet the ad hoc dimensional reporting needs of other new customers.

SEMDirector and Omniture Join Forces

SEMDirector, Inc., the leading provider of enterprise search analytics software and Omniture (Nasdaq: OMTR – News), a leading provider of online business optimization software, jointly announced today the formation of an alliance to provide a select portfolio of integrated software solutions. Under the terms of this agreement, the two companies will work together to extend the integration between Omniture’s Web analytics products and SEMDirector’s enterprise search analytics solutions.

The integration between these two product suites provides global, distributed organizations with unparalleled visibility, actionable metrics and robust functionality to manage and optimize all facets of search engine marketing across the entire enterprise. As part of this new alliance, SEMDirector also announced its participation in Omniture’s accreditation and certification programs for technology and sales.

Paid Search beats Conversion Rates of Organic Search

Websidestory today announced the results of a new study that shows paid search has only a slight 9 percent edge in conversion rates over organic search. In a study of leading business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce sites during the first eight months of this year, paid search — keywords bought on a pay-per-click basis at search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN — had a median order conversion rate of 3.40 percent at business-to-consumer e-commerce sites using the company’s award-winning HBX Analytics technology.

Paid v. Organic Search
    Median Order Conversion Rates at Business to Consumer E-Commerce Sites
    Jan.-Aug. 2006

    Marketing Channel                 Conversion Rate
    Paid Search                       3.40%
    Organic Search                    3.13%

Major Las Vegas hotels select WebSideStory’s HBX

The Venetian, one of Las Vegas’ premier luxury resort hotels and casinos, has selected its on-demand web analytics solution, HBX Analytics, to help generate more room reservations and tickets sales via its web site.  

WebSideStory adds to its growing list of travel and entertainment clients, including major hotel chains, airlines, cruise lines and entertainment properties. Last month, WebSideStory announced the signing of another major Las Vegas hotel and casino, the Wynn Las Vegas.

The Venetian, operated by the Las Vegas Sands Corp., decided to upgrade its web analytics solution as part of a major new online initiative designed to improve the customer experience and increase revenue. It selected WebSideStory following an extensive review of several major web analytics vendors. WebSideStory rose to the top of the list for several reasons, including its detailed marketing campaign analysis, multimedia tracking capabilities, and proven customer support, including professional services. Another consideration was WebSideStory’s support for Unicode characters, which enables clients to accurately measure web site usage in European and Asian languages. The Venetian recently opened a sister property in Macau, a territory in southern China, and will soon have a Chinese language web site to support.