Net Applications is a leading source of tools and utilities for webmasters and Internet marketers, with numerous offerings for managing, monitoring and optimizing websites. Their popular product, HitsLink, provides customers with easy-to-use access to real-time statistics on website traffic to help drive more educated business decision-making.
The market for web analytics products is booming, and there are hundreds of companies providing similar services, with virtually no differentiation between their offerings. HitsLink is unique because it provides more in-depth insight—reporting not just how many site visitors there are—but details on where those visitors are coming from. HitsLink was able to build this competitive advantage by integrating the Alexa Web Information Service (AWIS) from Amazon Web Services.Alexa provides details on more than 4.5 billion pages across the Web, including the general category of a site, traffic statistics, how long it’s been on the Web, when it was last updated, and the number of other sites that link to it. HitsLink users can access this information for their own sites, those of their competitors, and those that refer traffic to their sites. This helps online business owners develop a better understanding of their audience, observe the strengths and weaknesses of their site, and develop targeted marketing strategies.
Net Applications completed its AWIS integration in one month using Microsoft’s platform tools, VB.NET and Visual C# in Visual Studio. An Alexa icon is featured at the top of all HitsLink reports, providing customers with easy access to relevant data from AWIS. Customer feedback has been extremely positive—users definitely appreciate the valuable new information that HitsLink provides.
“The uniqueness of Alexa’s data and Amazon’s strength as a partner made our decision simple. By offering Alexa’s data, we gain an edge over our competitors, who don’t offer this deep data,” said Net Applications President Phil Vizzaccaro. “Feedback from our customers has been extremely positive.”
“In the Web site statistics market, it is important to continue to improve the quality and accessibility of the data we provide,” he continued. “Alexa’s Web services have enabled our customers to make better decisions by viewing their traffic and e-commerce statistics directly, as well as the rank and reach data provided by Alexa.”
Amazon Case Study: Net Applications
Date: 28-08-2013