WebSideStory, which first filed four years ago right before the bubble burst, has filed again. The web analytics company just hit profitability after losing money the past few years. It’s a great field, but to be honest, this feels a bit rushed to me.
If At First….
WebSideStory, which first filed four years ago right before the bubble burst, has filed again. The web analytics company just hit profitability after losing money the past few years. It's a great field, but to be honest, this feels a bit rushed to me….
Analytics is going to be the next big wave once the hooplah over paid search dies down. Sometime soon the masses of ecommerce sites are going to realize that their conversion rates are no higher than for direct marketing and that there’s room for 50-200% improvements in conversion rates. The analytics companies will be right in the middle of that trend.
WebSideStory has come a long way. Five years ago at least, it had the seedy reputation and claim to fame in San Diego as the host of a ton of pornography websites. I always thought that’s what this company did.
Web analytics is certainly going to be the next hit in terms of marketing. As the Google text ad platform dominates the web, analytics systems will provide the engine that discovers the “secrets to online success” in terms of SEO, overall web effectiveness, etc. I personally believe that the tools we have now for analytics just scratch the surface. There are a lot of things to be done in this area and I believe WebSideStory will be instrumental in a lot of this future development.