Who’s on your site and what are they doing? WebSideStory has hundreds of statistics about your audience’s visits, trends, and online transactions. Is that something that could help your e-commerce efforts?

In this day of free-flowing venture capital funding, it’s unusual to find a courageous Internet company that went it alone financially. But that’s the case with the successful, San Diego-based WebSideStory . The company started in 1996 with a handful of employees and its own resources; today, it has 100 employees and is continuing to grow. In June 1999, WebSideStory accepted its first infusion of cash, when two venture capitalist firms invested $30 million in the thriving business.
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WebSideStory’s main products handle these tasks:

  • Analyze Web traffic and user trends for large business sites (HitBox Enterprise) and small, independent sites (HitBox). HitBox Enterprise allows analysis of site traffic with more than 500 visitor statistics, including time spent on site, page views, unique visitors, top paths, referring URLs, returning visitors, and loyalty index.
  • Compile global statistics on Internet trends of more than 40 million users on its second Web site, StatMarket.com. These include browser, search engine, ISP, and operating system information, screen resolutions and colors, and installed plug-ins (Netscape). Statistics also cover items such as how many people use Windows 98, what day of the week is the most popular for Web surfing (Saturday), and what plug-in is second most popular (Macromedia Flash).
  • Provide resources and tools for Webmastersand Web designers, as well as free Web space for communities, at its third Web site, HitBox.com. This site is the “largest community of independent Web sites ranked by traffic,” according to WebSideStory’s statistics.
  • Leverage its statistic generation by using that technology to establish a search engine (http://www.yep.com) that ranks Web sites by their popularity and quality. Popularity is determined by unique daily page visits to the sites. Quality is ranked according to 10 criteria, including votes, bookmarking, time, and speed.

WebSideStory was named by Deloitte & Touche as a regional Technology “Fast 50.” It was also named by CIO Magazine as a top 1999 Internet business site. Advertising Age ranked Yep.com sixth among its top 15 Web sites visited by baby boomers (ages 35-54).

The market
If you have a Web site—regardless of how big or small—you’re a potential customer of WebSideStory. Most important to the company’s bottom line is the business market, with its purchase of HitBox Enterprise for e-business.WebSideStory has opened an office in France to market its French and English versions of HitBox throughout Europe, starting with France and Germany.

Strategic advantage
The company has several strategic advantages, including experience, a sophisticated network infrastructure, and extensive data warehousing capabilities to store visitor traffic information. The company has four DS-3s (T-3s), and four ISPs for redundancy. It also has more than 140 high-speed servers with 24-hour monitoring.

Financial information
WebSideStory is privately held. In June of 1999, investment firms TA Associates and Summit Partners invested $30 million in WebSideStory. Imperial Bank, a leading bank in the West, has granted WebSideStory a $4 million revolving line of credit so it can expand its technologies and services.

Management Team

  • Blaise Barrelet, chairman & founder
  • John J. Hentrich, president & CEO
  • Michael Christian, senior vice president
  • Jim Van Baalen, vice president, network and technology
  • Agnès Barrelet, vice president, media division
  • Jean-Pierre Cabane, vice president, engineering
  • Jay McCarthy, vice president, special projects
  • Geoff Johnston, vice president, corporate communications
  • Jean-Michel Menard, vice president, European operations
  • Tom Stigler, vice president, enterprise sales and business development
  • John Burke, corporate controller

10182 Telesis Ct., 6th floorSan Diego, CA 92121Tel: (858)546-0040Fax: (858)546-0480www.websidestory.com
What others are saying about WebSideStory
“WebSideStory Inc. said it has boosted traffic by 30 percent in the last 30 days at its HitBox.com Web site using real-time traffic analysis tools developed for its top-tier HitBox Enterprise service. San Diego-based WebSideStory provides Web-based audience measuring tools, including HitBox, used by more than 350,000 Web sites….On March 7, WebSideStory opened an office in Paris to house its new European subsidiary WebSideStory SAS, which was incorporated in France at the end of February. CEO Blaise Barrelet is a French citizen. On Feb. 1, the company appointed Jean-Michel Menard as vice president of its European operations. Privately held WebSideStory is backed by more than $30 million in venture capital and has expressed interest in pursuing an initial public offering in 2000.”

“WebSideStory draws more visitors,” by Richard Acello, dbusiness.com, March 2000.

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