Just a few days ago, global management consultancy Accenture announced that it is acquiring Memetrics, a Web optimization testing company. This latest deal in our marketing performance sector follows Omniture acquiring TouchClarity and Offermatica last year and Interwoven buying Optimost.

IMHO these acquisitions represent not so much industry consolidation as a growing awareness (some might say ‘groundswell’) of the opportunity that conversion optimization presents to businesses, large and small, to “do more” with the expensive but anonymous traffic that is already on their websites. And — bonus! — it’s all measurable: it’s all about what customers *demonstrably* prefer and not what management or the web designer *likes*…

But (isn’t there always one?), there are real issues around execution.

Landing page optimization is not about the technology - it’s about business. There are many wonderful online testing tools, including free Google Website Optimizer, which allow marketers to run experiments on their web pages and determine which layout, offer, creative and copy combination deliver the highest number of conversions.

The execution issues revolve around… (more…)

We got the official media release from Omniture this morning: Omniture Acquires Offermatica

We often get asked about the differences between an analytics tool and an optimization tool. If anyone still seriously questions the value of optimization, this acquisition demonstrates it. The answer: $65 Million.

As we always say, the analytics tool is for diagnosing the problem and the optimization tool is for finding the solutions. We at WiderFunnel have experience working with both Omniture and Offermatica – and welcome the acquisition as a great step forward in improving marketing effectiveness.

The tighter integration of these tools is great news for Omniture and Offermatica customers!