The Usability Company and WebAbacus announce Merger

The Usability Company and WebAbacus have announced a merger of the two businesses. The as-yet-unnamed new company fuses usability consulting and analytics technology to offer a more comprehensive customer experience service.

WebAbacus is one of the few analytics packages that can work across any channel. It was the only European web analytics firm chosen to contribute to the Q2 2004 Forrester Wave™ report into website vendors for large B2C sites.

The new company will offer web analytics and usability consulting as a single managed service, as well as standalone services. It also has plans to take customer experience management even further, by integrating elements such as CRM, survey data and performance data. It counts 43 of the Top 100 FTSE as clients, has made initial projections for business growth of 90% per cent by 2006 (end) and employs nearly 40 people with some important hires to be announced shortly.

Paul Blunden, CEO of the merged company (and formerly of The Usability Company), said: 'Web analytics is vital if an organisation wants to establish website traffic patterns. Combining this with professional usability consulting means that we can now also analyse communication between a site and a user, and what is happening in the final part of the process – from finger to brain. The recent huge increases in online marketing spend by brands leads to the need for top quality user experiences otherwise that marketing investment is wasted - usability, as well as analytics, plays a big role in this success.'

Ian Thomas, Marketing Director of the new company (and formerly of WebAbacus), said: 'Forrester has predicted that Web analytics firms worldwide will have to change to survive, and become 50% software and 50%consulting. More than ever before we should be determining what organisations need to measure, and why, to establish their true usability needs. Consulting offered by traditional Web analytics companies is very limited. It stops at the provision of analytics data, and does not provide an interpretation of the results or recommendations for action.'

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