Websidestory unveils HitBox 10

Websidestory ramped up the feature set of its HitBox Web analytics tools and unveiled this week the latest version as HBX, HitBox Version 10. HBX will replace both HitBox Enterprise and HitBox Commerce services.

For business users who would rather not drill down into the bowels of lengthy reports, HBX now adds a customizable dashboard along with the capability of building color-coded key performance indicator alerts.

Other additions include a search feature that tracks users’ relevant as well as failed search items, and a reporting function that measures the conversion of events from a lead form or from a download of a demo to an onsite purchase of a product or service.

Many of the features are targeted directly at marketing executives, such as HBX’s Page and Content Affinity feature, which offers the ability to track users through the system and report on the connection between page views and actions taken, either by individuals or by groups of individuals taking similar actions.

Also upgraded was A/B Testing, or split run tests, which presents two different pages to customers to see which yields a better result.

David Silversmith, CTO at CarFax, an online company that provides a vehicle history of every used car in North America, said the new A/B Testing feature is superior to the previous version.

“In the old version, IT was needed to set up a split run test, now a non-programmer can set it up on the fly just by changing page tags,” said Silversmith.

Guy Creese, research director with the Aberdeen Group said that what puts Webside story ahead of the curve is HBX’s ability to get the entire corporation involved in Web analytics, not just IT or marketing.

“HBX can give valuable reports to other groups within the enterprise. If product managers want to see a once-a-week report on what people are browsing on the product pages that the product manger owns, that’s where [HBX’s] new functionality comes in. It filters what you want to look at much easier than in the past,” said Creese.

HBX is shipping now.