Webtrends chosen to enhance customer experience by understanding key preferences and online behaviours

Lastminute.com recently revealed it has implemented web analytics technology to gain insight into customer behaviour.
The UK online travel and leisure retailer is using Webtrends Optimise and Segments across three of its major global brand websites: lastminute.com, Holiday Autos and ZUJI (part of the Travelocity Group).

Analytics and multi-variant testing (MVT) was already part of lastminute.com’s digital marketing and product strategy to test website content. But the brand wanted to enhance this by implementing web optimisation technology to obtain deeper insight into customer preferences. The ultimate goal was to provide its users with the best possible experience across its sites by fully understanding visitor behaviours and inclinations.

Partnership expertise crucial

Lastminute.com wasn’t just looking for a software vendor, it specifically wanted a technology partner to work closely with its team to advise on which sections of the site to test, and to formulate creative plans to understand customer behaviour.

Following a full marketplace evaluation, Webtrends was selected as the partner of choice. The vendor said the main factor in this decision was its managed service offering and experience within the travel industry, whereby its consultants not only support the testing process but also advise and make recommendations to drive clients’ optimisation strategies and long-term optimisation programmes.

In addition lastminute.com was attracted to the integration between the Webtrends Optimise and Segments products, which allows it to test its sites and target users with content based on their individual behaviour.

Speeding up development cycle

The company will also use the self-service functionality of Webtrends Visual Editor to design tests itself without the need for external assistance. This is designed to reduce the time-to-test, as well as increase the flexibility for web testing and ad-hoc analysis.

Karen Mullins, lastminute.com group customer marketing and user experience director, commented: “Understanding the direct revenue and conversion impact of our user experience improvements is vital, and we wanted to move our A/B and MVT testing and targeting strategy to the next level.

 “We chose to work with Webtrends because we wanted a partner that could provide both a hosted and self-service platform with a services team to advise on the best areas of our sites to test across all channels – desktop, tablet and mobile. For us, Webtrends has all bases covered plus a strong platform with unique integration that our internal users can easily adopt to deliver a market-leading optimisation strategy.”