WebSideStory Changes Name, Upgrades Products

WebSideStory changed its name to Visual Sciences, a company it acquired last year. At the time of rebranding, the company also updated its HBX Analytics product and Technology Platform offerings.

The name change to Visual Sciences “represents the culmination of the consolidation over the last seven to nine months,” said Melissa Purcell, VP of marketing at Visual Sciences. “The name Visual Sciences is reflective of the broader strategy and suite of offerings. WebSideStory is Web-centric.”

Visual Sciences will trade under the ticker VCSN and abandon the old WSSI symbol. The company won’t abandon its Web analytics focus. “We remain committed to Web and Internet channel analytics and are expanding our application footprint,” said Jim MacIntyre, CEO of Visual Sciences.

With the name change, Visual Sciences introduced its HBX Analytics 4.0, on-demand Web analytics services. The tool powers Visual Site, WSS Search, and WSS Publish. Upgrades to the product include expanded e-commerce-related capabilities, the ability to actively segment e-commerce order data, analyze product placement and report on multiple storefronts within one account. The tool allows clients to look beyond the basic transactions of consumers, but the behaviors associated with the transactions.

The firm also released Technology Platform 5, a real-time analytics platform bundling Visual Site and Visual Call. Purcell said the platform delivers true and dimensional analysis without roll-off. While most databases stop at 1,000 dimensions of statistics, Platform 5 is capable of handling over 1,000 records. Product offerings with a 1,000 record cap lose or role-off data.

“For a huge media site that wants to track every page, when it hits that limit, data rolls off,” said Purcell. “You can’t view it, you can’t run analysis, that queue can’t hold information. Platform 5 eliminates roll-off, users can drill all the way through and define huge dimensions of media.”

System requirements to run Visual Workstation within the Platform 5 offering have also been reduced. The software previously required a high-end PC and can now be run on most laptops or entry-level systems.

[note] The article original stated Platform 5 is a cube-based system. Platform 5 is not a cube based system, and is not subject to the limitations of such a system. It allows for ad hoc data queries and analysis.