WebSideStory, Inc. (later Visual Sciences), was founded by Blaise Barrelet in 1996 as

web analytics Web analytics is the measurement, data collection, collection, analysis, and reporting of web Data (computing), data to understand and optimize web usage. Web analytics is not just a process for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool fo ...

tool and link directory; its products were

Hitbox Collision detection is the computational problem of detecting the intersection of two or more objects. Collision detection is a classic issue of computational geometry and has applications in various computing fields, primarily in computer grap ...

and HBX. The company went public on September 28, 2004 (NASDAQ: WSSI). In 2006, WebSideStory acquired high-end private data analysis and visualization software company Visual Sciences for $57 million. A year after the acquisition, WebSideStory rebranded itself as Visual Sciences, Inc.Dignan, Larry (May 9, 2007)
"WebSideStory becomes Visual Sciences; bolsters enterprise focus"
''ZDNet''. In January 2008 Visual Sciences, Inc. was acquired by

Omniture Omniture is an online marketing and web analytics business unit in Orem, Utah. It was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2009. Until 2011, Omniture operated as a business unit within Adobe as the "Omniture Business Unit", but as of 2012 Adobe began reti ...

(NASDAQ: OMTR) for $394 million.Omniture Press Detail: Omniture to Acquire Visual Sciences
/ref> WebSideStory was founded and headquartered in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

Business model evolution

WebSideStory originally launched with a

SaaS Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is cons ...

business model, charging customers a monthly fee for web analytics, but finding customers willing to pay for web analytics proved difficult. WebSideStory then pivoted to offer a limited version of the analytics product

for free "For Free" is a song by American musician DJ Khaled featuring Canadian rapper Drake. It was released on June 3, 2016 by We the Best Music Group and Epic Records as the lead single from DJ Khaled's ninth studio album, ''Major Key''. The song wa ...

in exchange for a small advertising banner on each website. Users who clicked the banners were directed to a list of top sites owned by WebSideStory, creating an advertising revenue opportunity. Unlike many late '90s Internet startups, WebSideStory did not raise angel funding or

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

, but became profitable through customers and by displaying banners on their top site list. In late 1999, WebSideStory opted to target larger brick-and-mortar businesses as customers for their Hitbox product. Customers opted to pay for more in-depth statistics in exchange for removing the traditional Hitbox banner from their websites, giving birth to the "HBX" product line. Once WebSideStory was financially sound, it shuttered the free version of Hitbox and its associated advertising revenues. The company went public in 2004 and eventually purchased Visual Sciences, adopting their name. Visual Sciences was in turn acquired by

in 2008, and then in October 2009

was acquired again by

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

, and integrated into the

Adobe Marketing Cloud Adobe Experience Cloud (AEC), formerly Adobe Marketing Cloud (AMC), is a collection of integrated online marketing and web analytics products by Adobe Inc. History Adobe Experience Cloud includes a set of analytics, social, advertising, media ...

."Adobe acquires Omniture Software"
(October 23, 2009)

References

{{reflist Companies established in 1996 Web analytics Companies based in San Diego