• by Paul Gough , September 23, 2002

San Diego-based WebSideStory Inc. released today a second version of its HitBox Commerce software, one the company said marries Web purchasing data and visitor behavior to help media buyers to se how their efforts have been doing.

HitBox Commerce has been used by enterprise-class based Web sites and a growing number of e-commerce sites with more to come, said Michael Christian, SVP at WebSideStory.

The new version, 2.0, shows retailers the effectiveness of their online sales channel in turnkey software that can be customized in other ways, too. E-commerce sites can track return on investment through online sales, promotions and other activities. It’s done without Web server logs and without significant work by the IT folks. Spokesman Erik Bratt said the drill-down merchandising analysis doesn’t need hardware or software and is accessed through a Web portal.

For media planners and buyers, WebSideStory spokeswoman Kelly Seal said Version 2.0 has two particular points of interests:

Campaign analysis tools that allow planners and buyers to see the number of orders, revenue, products sold, average sale price and other information for each campaign. It’s built for online campaigns but it can be used for offline campaigns as well if it directs people to a Web page for response, Christian said. Deeper information is also available, including the cities and zip codes that generated the most revenue by campaign, or brands and products sold from a campaign.

It’s also able to determine what Web sites referred customers to the e-commerce pages. Want to know what pages you’re advertising on have generated the best ROI? Want to know the best keywords? Have an affiliate program but don’t know how well it’s working? Bratt said HitBox Commerce provides the information to find out revenue, orders and number of customers from each.

All are done in real time, Christian said.

Other features include cross-sell reporting to find out whether customers purchase other items too (and what they are); conversion rates during checkout; and charts that quickly tell the story.

“It’s not just revenue and products sold. It [HitBox Commerce 2.0] ties to customer behavior to see which advertising campaign and links generate the most sales,” said Bratt.