Since starting out in 1995 as a simple traffic analysis tool primarily for webmasters, NetIQ's WebTrends sure has grown up. Today, WebTrends 7.1 - now one of the leading Web analytics packages - hits the market, with three notable improvements aimed squarely at helping businesses reach paying customers and tweak online marketing efforts to drive higher sales including improved campaign performance, better search engine marketing and detailed audience segmentation.

"Clearly, (WebTrends' focus) has changed. We're helping to retain visitors and convert those clicks into sales," said Jeff Seacrist, director of product marketing for WebTrends last week. "WebTrends is helping customers improve their marketing results."

The first enhancement Seacrist pointed out in WebTrends 7.1 is the integration with ExactTarget, which measures email campaign performance.

"It visually pinpoints where email campaigns are losing prospects," said Seacrist. "This is able to examine the exact response to an email. It breaks down the clicks, revenue per link, and other data."

The email campaign analysis tool can break down the click-through process for an email, from the initial click all the way through the shopping cart, where sales are still abandoned at the last minute. The tool provides a visual overlay of the HTML-based email with a link-by-link analysis showing which ones performed well and how much revenue each link generated. Data is easily imported into Microsoft Excel.

In order to use this feature, customers must also subscribe to the ExactTarget service, which is not included in the WebTrends pricing scheme.

One of the biggest challenges today for small business owners on the Web is getting and maintaining search engine results that translate into sales. The makers of WebTrends 7.1 aim to change that with its WebPosition Gold 3 module, which optimizes search engine page results, rankings and keywords.

NetIQ acquired WebPosition Gold last year.

WebPosition can tie search engine rankings to revenue. Seacrist said this feature enables customers to understand where the most profitable position is and also where competitors rank.

"You may discover that being number three is more profitable than being number one," he said, adding that the high costs associated with ranking at the top of popular search engines may be too expensive and not very cost-effective for most businesses.

The third enhancement featured in WebTrends 7.1 is audience segmentation, which can easily identify profitable visitor segments and visually compare their behavior and conversion rates.

The integration of ExactTarget and WebTrends 7.1 allows users to monitor and tweak promotional email campaigns.

Included in the segmentation enhancements for WebTrends 7.1 is a special browser plug-in that works with SmartView, a browser overlay that was introduced in version 7. The new plug-in can break down link performance on a Web page. For example, you can determine the revenue generated from new and repeat visitors. You can also identify which links on a page are most effective in converting visitors to buyers.

"These enhancements make our product more intuitive and more user-friendly to better convert visitors," said Seacrist.

When asked how the small to medium-sized business market has grown in relation to WebTrends, Seacrist said the market hasn't been expanding at a rapid pace in his view. But there are signs - or hopes - this market will grow for the company.

"A lot of them are still looking for very basic things like $35 per month hosting services. But, they're going to eventually become more sophisticated in the services they want," he said.

WebTrends 7.1 is available immediately.

Devin Comiskey is Managing Editor of ECommerce-Guide.com

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