Webtrends, Widemile, Web Analytics, and Website Optimization — Interview with Alex Yoder, CEO, Webtrends

August 11th, 2009 by Lars Johansson

Webtrends acquisition of a platform for testing is long overdue. That’s why their purchase of Widemile is so exciting. I took the opportunity to ask Alex Yoder, President and CEO of Webtrends, a few questions about the news.

The Webtrends acquisition of Widemile certainly fills a gap, but why did you make the move now?

Alex Yoder, CEO, Webtrends: Probably for four primary reasons. First, we needed to get our organization focused in the right direction around our core competencies and customer satisfaction. The release of Analytics 9 and the highest customer satisfaction and customer value ratings in the recent Forrester Wave report are evidence that we have made successful headway in these areas.

Second, we wanted to first execute on the “openness” of our platform before adding complementary solutions. The biggest challenge in the market right now is having solutions that don’t integrate. Customers are tired of hearing presentations that discuss integration, but where it doesn’t truly exist. Our approach is to be sure that we are prepared to deliver in integration through a truly open platform. This approach will allow us to accelerate adoption and value for the customer from all of our products.

Third, the market for optimization technology was still pretty fragmented and not very well developed. The market has now clearly begun to cross the chasm, which represents a perfect time to enter the market—let others invest and uncover the challenges, let us step in and take advantage of the knowledge.

Finally, the timing is right from an investment standpoint. One of our competitors spent $120M to get the same set of solutions that we just brought into the Webtrends family. Another competitor spent almost $70M to get just the A/B and Multivariate Testing portion of the product, without any comprehensive targeting capabilities. We’ve done extensive due-diligence and found the Widemile technology to be far superior to that of our competitors, who spent…a lot.

Why do you think your offering will be stronger compared to your competitors’ offering?

Alex Yoder, CEO, Webtrends: As I just mentioned, we did a great deal of diligence. We actually had partnerships with most of the offerings in the market and you may recall that I personally was involved with Test and Target in its infancy at Omniture. Widemile has spent the last five years perfecting this technology and has invested heavily in development of the technology and support systems, but simply did not invest in marketing and sales—they had an indirect sales approach that was not successful.

One thing that many in the marketplace (even purported testing experts) are likely not aware of is that the years of development have culminated in a recently released platform that most of the market has not seen. We leverage a “design of experiments” approach that allows for the use of the best possible combination of Full Factorial, Fractional Factorial and Taguchi, which allows for the greatest number of levels and options, but maximizes the time to value. In other words, some testing methods are very complex and take 30-60 days to see results, unless traffic volume is very high, or the options are very low. Our approach allows for the maximization of balancing time to value with complexity of testing. Speed to value is also enhanced because of the simplicity of our tagging approach—one tag for the page, instead of a tag for each element tested, like our competitor’s solutions.

Another key point is that Widemile had built behind the same core value of openness. It is very easy to exchange data. Finally, our market intelligence told us that other solutions were too difficult to use without technical resources or outside consultants/contractors. We spent a lot of time focused on building a user interface designed specifically for non-technical marketers. We tested it ourselves. Literally, a member of our marketing department used the solution with no training, or outside support.

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