October 25, 2007

Omniture Buying Visual Sciences

The self implosion of the web analytics space continues as Omniture announced it will be buying Visual Sciences. Visual Sciences, bought by WebSideStory in 2006, managed to pull an "Alien" and take over the ship from the inside, when most of the executives left the company.

WebSideStory then changed its name to Visual Sciences. They may want to keep an eye on that over at Omniture.

The press release stated:

Omniture Inc. (Nasdaq: OMTR), a leading provider of online business optimization software, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Visual Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: VSCN) in a stock and cash transaction valued at approximately $394 million.

The combination of Omniture and Visual Sciences creates a company with substantial scale and resources to deliver industry leading products and services that address the rapidly expanding online business optimization market. The combined company will be able to accelerate investments, meet a wider set of customer needs through a richer solution set and have a significantly greater opportunity to grow into new markets.

“With the tremendous growth opportunities we see in the online optimization market, we believe that in addition to being financially accretive to our shareholders, this is a strategic investment that will drive increased value for customers and partners,” said Josh James, CEO and co-founder of Omniture. “We are facing a very significant opportunity defined by the rapid growth of online advertising and online business in general. This acquisition enables Omniture to accelerate our investments in advanced solutions that drive customer success as well as create further opportunities to cross-sell our growing portfolio of products to a combined customer base of more than 4,000 customers.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Visual Sciences shareholders will receive $2.39 in cash per share and a fixed exchange ratio of 0.49 shares of Omniture stock for each Visual Sciences share, on a fully diluted basis. Based upon Omniture's closing price on Wednesday, October 24, 2007, this yields a total consideration of $18.04 per share. Upon the close of the transaction, Visual Sciences stockholders will own approximately 13.7 percent of the combined company on a pro forma basis.

“Omniture is a leader in online business optimization, and absolutely the right company to leverage our technology and resources for the benefit of the industry. The combined company will provide our customers with a richer solution set, faster innovation and greater access to unique industry and business expertise,” said Jim MacIntyre, CEO of Visual Sciences. “We look forward to bringing these two great teams together.”

The acquisition, which is expected to close in early to mid 2008, is subject to customary closing conditions, including approval of stockholders of both companies and regulatory approvals. The transaction will be accounted for under purchase accounting rules.

Due to the absence at this time of estimates of the acquisition-related restructuring costs and the allocation of the purchase price between goodwill, in-process R&D, other intangibles and equity-based compensation expenses related to SFAS 123R, Omniture is currently unable to provide GAAP estimates on future earnings.

The transaction is currently expected to be accretive to earnings immediately after closing on a non-GAAP basis. Due to purchase accounting, the company's target of accretive to earnings on a non-GAAP basis assumes no adverse impact from the loss of deferred revenue following the close.

Posted by Frank Watson at 5:25 PM | Permalink

August 1, 2007

11 Cool Things with HBX Analytics

Visual Sciences' HBX Analytics has been around on the scene for a long time. In a discussion with Ali Behnam from Visual Sciences professional services, I got his help in scoping out 11 Cool Things You Can Do With HBX Analytics. Here is a summary of the major headlines:

Active Viewing / Site Overlay
Customizable Dashboards
Navigate the Funnel
Capture Attribute Data
Filter on Conversion Types
Active Segmentation
Custom Metrics
Campaign Attributes
Report Builder
Active Dashboard to Model What If Scenarios
Leverage Powerful APIs

The article will give you some ideas as to how these powerful capabilities can be applied to your business.

Posted by at 10:00 AM | Permalink

July 13, 2007

Visual Sciences Retains Goldman, Sachs & Co

It looks like life at Visual Sciences remains busy. In response to a number of unsolicited queries about acquiring them, the company has retained Goldman, Sachs & Co to manage those queries, and evaluate their next steps. The company has stated that the reason for their retaining Goldman, Sachs & Co is to allow the company to remain focused on day to day operations, even while these opportunities can be explored.

With the announcement it looks like Visual Sciences is doing two things: (1) Reassuring customers that any rumors they may hear about such activity will not affect the support they get, and: (2) while there is nothing in the announcement that suggests that the company is trying to sell itself, they are letting the market know that they are open to such discussions.

Posted by at 10:38 AM | Permalink

May 10, 2007

WebSideStory Rebrands itself as Visual Sciences

We covered the announcement by WebSideStory that they are rebranding themselves as Visual Sciences earlier. The message from the company is that their "decision to use one brand — Visual Sciences — going forward is symbolic."

At a deeper level, however, I do think it says something about the company's orientation. Leaving behind a well known brand is generally something you do when you want to change your image and positioning.

The prior brand, WebSideStory was a highly respected brand in the analytics industry, but the Visual Sciences brand brings to mind higher end analytics solutions for sites with more complex needs.

That said, it seems clear that the Visual Sciences remains committed to the existing products, such as HBX Analytics. In fact, they also co-announced the release of HBX Analytics 4. The major features in this release include:

Active Segmentation for E-Commerce Order Data
Product Placement Analysis
Report on Multiple Store Fronts within on Account
Enhanced User Administration
Commerce Custom Variables
User Interface Enhancements
Visual Workstation for HBX provides:
- Custom reporting
- Ad-hoc analysis
- Interactive data visualization capabilities

I would expect Visual Sciences to continue to support and enhance their entry level products, and to look to provide a consistent migration path for companies that want to progressively get deeper and deeper into web analytics.

Posted by at 1:27 PM | Permalink

September 25, 2006

Organic & Paid Search Conversion Metrics Similar

ClickZ reports on a WebSideStory study that shows that organic search traffic realized a conversion rate of 3.13 percent while paid search traffic realized a conversion rate of 3.4 percent. The study covered 57 million search engine visits from "20 business-to-consumer e-commerce sites during the first eight months of 2006." ClickZ notes that organic search traffic does tend to have a higher click rate (1.5 times higher than paid search volume).

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 1:23 PM | Permalink

June 7, 2006

Top Four & Two Percent Are Key For On Site Search Keyword Optimization

ClickZ has the details of a Patricia Seybold Group study which says that for e-commerce sites, the top two-percent of search queries conducted within the site are the most important. The top four-percent of search queries conducted on non-ecommerce sites are the most important. If you improve the searcher experience for those top 4 or 2 percent of your internal site searches, half of all searchers will be happier.

So if you can mine the top four-percent of your internal searches and start in order to make those results better, you can greatly improve your searcher's experience. Specifically with a site you are trying to sell on, if you can improve those top queries, you will more likely convert on a sale. Happy searchers are 2.7 times more likely to convert on your site.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:34 AM | Permalink

February 16, 2006

AOL Leads in Online Conversions; Google Falls in Last

WebSideStory conducted a new study that revealed Conversion Rates for Each Major Search Engine. For the month of January, AOL lead the pack with a conversion rate of 6.17%, followed by MSN with 6.03%, Yahoo with 4.07% and finally Google with 3.83%. The study includes both organic and paid search referrals from the search engines. The study shows that the four major search engines listed above performed "above the median average for all search engines, which was 1.97 percent for the month of January."

Ali Behnam, senior digital marketing consultant for WebSideStory, explained that the possible reason why AOL and MSN have a higher conversion rate when compared to Google and Yahoo is most likely because AOL and MSN are "portals rich in content and services, " which may appeal more towards the "buyer friendly demographic."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:11 AM | Permalink

January 30, 2006

New Study Reports that Search Sites Provides Twice the Conversion Rate When Compared With Other Acquisition Sources

The Dow Jones story: Search Sites Better At Getting Shoppers To Buy: Study, reports on new research from WebSideStory that shows search engines (both paid and organic listings) provide more than twice the conversion rates than other forms of Internet advertising and marketing.

However, direct navigation offered the highest conversion rate. The sites used in the study cover five product categories.

From the article: The study defines conversion rate as the percentage of visitors to a site who view an ad or clicking on a search result and purchase a product or service.

Numbers

Search Search Sites had a conversion rate of 2.3%, meaning that for every 100 consumers clicking on a search result or advertisement, 2.3 people made a purchase.

Other Forms of Internet Marketing Banner ads, affiliate marketing links, comparison shopping search sites* and other online marketing efforts had a conversion rate of 0.96%.

* Note, that shopping engines are not considered in the main search category.

Search Bypass: Direct Navigation/Bookmarks Direct to a company's web site (including via a bookmark) offered a conversion rate of 4.23%.

Where did the data come from: The study collected data from Web sites that sell apparel, toys, electronics, sporting goods and leisure products. Among the most successful were toy sites. When reached through a search engine, they had a conversion rate of 4.85% while Web sites selling computers and electronics had a conversion rate of 1.35%, the study found.

The sites used in the study generate more than $3 billion in annual sales online in five categories listed above.

This news release from WebSideStory has more including precise definitions for each category.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:26 PM | Permalink

June 28, 2005

WebSideStory: Google Continues Its Popularity Rise

New stats released today from WebSideStory show Google has continued to gain in popularity every year since 2001, while Yahoo is shown to have a continual decline. MSN has had declines for the past two years.

The data shows the percentage of traffic sent to US web sites that use the WebSideStory tracking system as of the first Monday in June, going back to 2001. Google's hit an all time high this year with 52.2 percent of referrals sent.

Figures are available in chart format via this press release, and here's a graphical look at them:

The company also released figures on how Google is doing as a referral source for selected countries, as of the first Monday in June this month, June 6.

Sites in Germany are said to receive nearly all their search referral traffic from Google, while Japan has the lowest referral percentage -- though still nearly 50 percent there:

Country

Referrals Germany

91.1% Australia

80.8% UK

73.6% US

52.2% Japan

41.9%

For more information about WebSideStory and past data releases, see the WebSideStory's StatMarket Search Engine Ratings page within Search Engine Watch.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:41 AM | Permalink

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