Coremetrics Buys Scenario-Optimization Firm

Coremetrics announced on Monday the acquisition of WebCriteria, a scenario-optimization firm that allows companies to improve the performance of their sites by anticipating customer behavior.

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

The acquisition builds on Coremetrics’ marketing analytics offering by adding WebCriteria’s scenario-optimization technology and services. Scenario optimization identifies the many different functions a Web site performs for consumers. Some come for information, others for customer service, and still others in response to an ad campaign.

WebCriteria has built a tool called Site Analyst that allows businesses to define the various scenarios and establish parameters to measure success. The tool is aimed at helping businesses make site changes that would have the biggest impact in reaching the pre-established goals.

Burlingame, Calif.-based Coremetrics will take on seven employees based in WebCriteria’s Portland office. WebCriteria brings with it a client list that includes HP, IBM, AT&T and MasterCard. Coremetrics plans to offer Site Analyst under the Coremetrics brand as one of its site-design tools.

The new software will be integrated with Coremetrics’ lifetime site-visitor information, known as LIVE profiles. By drawing on the LIVE profile data, Site Analyst will be able to construct scenarios on the fly from a vast trove of user data, according to Brett Hurt, Coremetrics’ founder and chief architect.

“The combination of our LIVE profile data and WebCriteria’s Site Analyst product is very synergistic,” he said.

Hurt said the acquisition would help Coremetrics offer clients the varied tools they need to execute their Internet strategy. While Web sites began simply acted as a brochures in their early days and then moved to storefronts later, Hurt said most companies have evolved them to be places for broad groups of applications.

“What we hear from the marketplace is this is where the market needs to go,” he said.