Online Marketing Trends

It’s official; Omniture has completed the acquisition of Visual Sciences. The Visual Sciences stock has been removed from NASDAQ, www.visualsciences.com redirects to the Omniture website.

Here are some notable changes (taken from Jupiter Research):

Omniture Discover OnPremise will utilize the Visual Sciences Platform 5 technology and page tags from VS can populate SiteCatalyst data, which will appear in the integrated interface. Omniture will maintain its legacy Omniture Discover (hosted) segmentation solution.

Omniture’s Search Center now appears under the header of Site Search and Content, where they wasted no time in incorporating Visual Sciences’ Publish Web Content Management Solution.

The popular HBX Analytics solution will be rebranded as Omniture SiteCatalyst HBX. Although HBX should be placed on an endangered species list, because the product will likely be phased out. Omniture states that HBX, “will continue to be supported until the key features have been integrated into Omniture SiteCatalyst”. HBX has had a long ride, from Hitbox to WebSideStory’s HBX, to Visual Sciences’ HBX and now Omniture. It looks like it’s finally time to retire the jersey and move on.

HBX Analytics 

I have had some busy weeks lately. Last week Fulton Yancy from Visual Sciences visited our office for a HBX Analytics training. Fulton Yancey has previously worked for WebTrends and since we work with the WebTrends software extensively he has been able to give us a good understanding of the differences between HBX Analytics and WebTrends. It actually made me forgive the fact that HBX Analytics is an ASP based service instead of hosted-yourself.

Visual Sciences 

This week my colleague and I flew to London to have a Visual Sciences training for Visual Site at the EMEA Partner Certification days. This training was our first real handson experience with the software where we could actually work with it. Our first experience was at the partner day in Hoofddorp last May. We absolutely love the products, it is such an high level analytics tool you just have to have it when you see it. After the 3 days of Visual Sciences brainwashing After the training we did an examination which was quite demanding actually.

Google AdWords

My Qualified Google AdWords Professional certification is about to expire in November. That means that I will have to re-examinate soon. Actually since iMETRIX saw the light two weeks ago this couldn’t be a better moment to browse through all new features that have been added to Google AdWords over the past two years. Some things that come in mind are advertising on Google Maps, mobile ads, the AdWords editor software, Website Optimizer, Google Analytics etc. etc. I can imagine a lot of people who are not using Google AdWords every day will get lost somewhere and won’t be able to get all out of the system.

Certificate in Digital Marketing

In one of my previous posts I mentioned the digital marketing plan I had to make as my first assigment for the IDM Certificate in Digital Marketing certification. I have been working hard for it but managed to output a digital marketing plan on time and actually I was happy with the result. Last Friday I received my mark and I’m happy to tell that I passed this first assigment. YAY!!!

Today WebTrends announced their “Move to ML2″ program through which they are offering Visual Sciences’ HBX Analytics customers to migrate to WebTrends Marketing Lab 2. They will give current HBX Analytics customers an licence credit of up to 100%.

It’s interesting to read why WebTrends offers this program. As they state in their press release, it is targeted to those “who may be uncertain about future support for their existing investment”. Maybe WebTrends suggests Visual Sciences will drop support for HBX Analytics since their tool Visual Site is much more comprehensive. Or could it be that WebTrends responds on reports that Visual Sciences settled an patent litigation with NetRatings Inc?

Read the press release: WebTrends Invites HBX Analytics Customers to Move to WebTrends Marketing Lab 2