Listen to, and Talk with, Web Analytics Experts in November

October 29th, 2007 by Lars Johansson

Web analytics, testing, and on-site behavioral targeting will be discussed at the Internet Marketing Conference in Stockholm, November 29–30, 2007.

Listen to the following speakers and panelists discuss web analytics, testing, predictive analytics, and on-site behavioral targeting:

Aurélie Pols, OX2 (Belgium)
Rolf Elmér, Avail Intelligence (Sweden)
Jim Löfgren, Redcats Nordic (Sweden)
Kasper Skou, wunderloop (Germany)
Brian Clifton, Google (UK)
Tommy Strandvall, Tobii Technology (Sweden)
John McConnell, Applied Insights (UK)
Lars Nordström, L-Soft (Sweden)
Pontus Kristiansson, Avail Intelligence (Sweden)
Funda Denizhan, InUse (Sweden)
Pete Olson, Amadesa (USA)
David Lerdell, Lerdell Investigations (Sweden)
Adam Goodvach, Global Reviews (UK)
Dag Petter Svendsen, Komplett (Norway)
Henry Morales, Satama (Finland)
Dan O’Sullivan, milesBENNETT Web Analytics Consultants (UK)
Fulton Yancy, Visual Sciences (Sweden)
Dennis Mortensen, IndexTools (Hungary)
Steve Jackson, Satama (Finland)
Vicky Brock, Highland Business Research (Scotland)
Sean Burton, Foviance (UK)

Check out the full program!

Why is Sweden the right place for the conference?

Sweden is one of the two or three leading countries in the world when it comes to new technologies. If you’re curious about new trends, just come and take a look at Sweden.

— Steve Ballmer, Microsoft, April 2005

Why not combine business and pleasure?

Stockholm is the greenest, most livable, city in the world according to a study.

— Reader’s Digest, 2007

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Posted in Europe, Test and Target, Web Analytics | 2 Comments »

Omniture to Acquire Visual Sciences

October 26th, 2007 by Lars Johansson

I’ve joked about it for a while, and now it has come true—Omniture gobbles up Visual Sciences. I’ve said it before and will say it again: these are interesting times. This is huge news.

Omniture to Acquire Visual Sciences

If it hasn’t already, WebTrends must feel the heat now. I predict that an IPO or a sale will be a reality within half a year.

Looking at the European market, I think some vendors really need to make up their minds whether they truly want to show a presence here. Other than Omniture (soon including Visual Sciences) and WebTrends, players like Coremetrics and ClickTracks don’t show enough presence in Europe if they want to build for long-term success over here.

And how are European vendors going to stay competitive if not solely by focusing on price? Omniture’s development muscles will be hard to match.

Read this analysis and apply it to web analytics:
Bye-bye Little BI

Bryan Eisenberg expressed hopes for industry standards thanks to the acquisition. While I think Omniture made a wise move and have no doubt that the acquisition is right for it, I must question whether it’s good for the web analytics industry. If one player becomes too dominant, how will that affect innovation? In the short term, I’m sure it’ll force competitors to be more innovative, but will that help if they simply don’t have enough money in the bank? I’m not so sure that I want an SAP of web analytics. Competition tends to be a good thing.

Read this analysis and apply it to web analytics:
Business Objects and SAP: the good, the bad and the ugly

So what will happen with HBX Analytics now? My guess is that it doesn’t really fill any empty spot in Omniture’s portfolio and will be discontinued, much like the company plans on discontinuing Instadia ClientStep. Visual Site will probably be integrated into Discover somehow.

There’s a second part to the joke I’ve been telling. It goes like this: OMTR acquires all its competitors just to get acquired by someone like Oracle or SAP.

Plenty of speculation abounds, but one thing is a fact—these are exciting times.

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Interview with Rolf Elmér, CEO of Avail Intelligence

October 19th, 2007 by Lars Johansson

Rolf Elmér, CEO of Avail Intelligence, is a 1990 graduate of Lund University who received an MBA from Stockholm School of Economics in 2003. He also holds a PhD in high-energy nuclear physics from the Division of Cosmic and Subatomic Physics at Lund University since 1996.

Could you describe the difference between your optimization solutions Customer Interaction Broker, Landing Page Optimizer, and Navigation Predictor?

Easy! The Avail eMarketing Suite consists of five different modules, each made for different parts of the customer interaction cycle on a website.

Starting from the landing page, which is the first page a new visitor sees, Landing Page Optimizer makes it possible to make the first page adaptive and automatically tailor-made to show the most relevant products based on the search word the visitor entered at external search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. You could compare it to a bricks-and-mortar store with the ability to change and adapt the storefront as you approach the entrance.

Needless to say, a lot of companies spend huge amounts of money today to create special landing pages for each sponsored search word or campaign.

Navigation Predictor then helps the customer during the shopping process and presents the most relevant products, offerings, or creatives based on the customer’s browsing behavior, what they put in their basket, or previous transaction history. For the eCommerce site, this optimizes sales at each interaction point with the customer on the site.

Customer Interaction Broker uses explicit user-generated content to create trust and confidence in the shopping process. A good example is Ellos.se, where important customer feedback is captured and forwarded to product managers and where customers can share product experiences.

Navigation Predictor can recommend additional products or offerings to the customer based on My Favorites or wish lists.

We have seen the use of many methodologies for online optimization: Taguchi, choice modeling, optimal design, etc. What methodology do you use?

Our core technology is based on a set of collaborative filtering, search, and indexing algorithms with the following unique combination of features:

Delivering relevant product recommendations/results for the consumer.
Being fast enough to be applicable in real time.
Following the linear scalability between required computational power and the size of underlying data sets.

The ability to combine all three of the above is vital for the successful application of collaborative filtering to actual eCommerce situations and is what makes Avail technology unique.

The 5%–10% increase in sales you mention in the brochure for Navigation Predictor is quite modest. Can you tell us about the biggest change in sales that you’ve witnessed?

For an online site with a turnover of 9 billion, a 5% to 10% increase is quite substantial. In contrast to most companies in this space, our results are immediate and measurable. In addition to added sales for each basket, we also see dramatic increase in conversion rates. We have customers reporting up to 20% increase in conversion rate, which of course means that Avail really maximizes the value of online visitor traffic to eCommerce sites.

Do you think that being a European vendor gives you any advantages?

It surely does. Some of our US competitors really struggle with language and cultural barriers. Originating from a small, export-oriented country in the outskirts of Europe at least has made us aware and conscious about these issues and has let us prepare both technically and strategically for it.

In short, we claim that our products have the following main competitive differentiating factors:

COMMERCIAL

The most complete coverage of the entire customer interaction cycle, bridging the gap between search and navigation.
Immediate, measurable, and success-proven results in terms of conversion rates, average order values, and overall sales revenue.
Available on purely performance-based terms.

TECHNICAL/IMPLEMENTATION

Truly relevant behavioral analysis combined with world-class scalability and reliability.
Outstandingly quick installation (2–3 days) and ease-of-use (no need to touch, but user-friendly GUI available for manual merchandising overriding analysis).
Platform independence and SOA/Web Delivery architecture.

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Listen to, and Talk with, Web Analytics Experts in November

Omniture to Acquire Visual Sciences

Interview with Rolf Elmér, CEO of Avail Intelligence

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