VisitBritain to increase online purchases and presence with web analytics

Government funded tourist board selects SCL Analytics and Unica to integrate web analytics and ecommerce

LONDON – 5 July 2007, VisitBritain, the UK’s national tourism agency, has kicked off its international campaign to increase its online revenues by integrating web analytics with its ecommerce operations. The organisation is working with web analytics consultants, SCL Analytics, using Unica Corporation’s (Nasdaq: UNCA) Affinium® NetInsight® web analytics software for the project. It has already rolled out the newly revamped functionality on its visitbritaindirect.com sites for France, Germany and the US.

VisitBritain has more than one million unique visitors across its global network of 40+ websites. In addition to increasing revenue, VisitBritain hopes to use the technology to gain further visibility into the online behaviour of its site visitors to help develop, tailor and measure the performance of its services for its customers and partners.

“As the official government funded tourism agency for Britain, we have a responsibility to promote visitors and make their experience a pleasant one. An easy-to-use and informative website is key to achieving this goal,” said Harry Speller, customer experience executive at VisitBritain. “This integration will provide us with the information we need to ensure our website is providing valuable products and services for our visitors from around the world.”

The data generated through the analysis of its ecommerce transactions will help VisitBritain to:

• improve its network of partners through insight into its pay per click advertising performance and increased visibility into marketing performance.
• measure the effectiveness of its marketing activities throughout the organisation and provide clear reports and evaluation to the government.

“Using web analytics to gain insight into its online shops will not only help VisitBritain improve its revenue, but to extend its reach and provide better customer service,” said Alan Hall, managing director of SCL Analytics. “This will allow visitors to the site to personalise their holiday plans and beat the queues by purchasing tickets for major tours and attractions online.”

“The information VisitBritain will gain through analysis of its ecommerce transactions will easily translate into success in marketing and customer outreach efforts,” said Steve O’Brien, vice president of internet marketing at Unica. “We’re happy to provide the platform to help VisitBritain improve measurement and increase accountability in order to secure its ongoing government funding.”

VisitBritain will be participating in a free webinar, “Customer behaviour demystified: the dark art of advanced web analytics” alongside Unica and SCL Analytics. The webinar will take place on 10 July at 2.00 p.m. GMT and will be chaired by chaired by Mycustomer.com editor, Stuart Lachlan. For more details and to register please visit: www.mycustomer.com/members/webinar

About SCL Analytics

SCL Analytics (www.sclanalytics.com) provides tools, consultancy and training for web analytics and is the sole distributor of Unica Affinium NetInsight software in the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia. The software analyses both online and offline data to provide marketers with a clearer picture of customer needs, buying patterns and behaviour.