Genealogy
Now in it's 3rd major release, VITES™ started in 2001 as a proper end-to-end tracking system, built when a client was trying to understand where his online marketing spend was going. The original system was just called End-to-End Tracker and worked by stamping the visitors PC with a unique code and their source when they arrived at the site for the first time, and then spewing this information out whenever the visitor sent information to the client.
It was amazing and proved the 80:20 rule, showing that 80% of the advertising spend was pretty poor. Not surprisingly our client was over the moon and the business exploded when they invested in the right online advertising and had faith in the value of it as they were able to measure the real return on investment for themselves.
VITES™ 1.0
Born in the middle of 2003, this was the first time we linked the data recording to the delivery. It was clear that first time visitors to a website needed to be encouraged to return to generate revenue, and that returning visitors to the website needed to be treated differently to first timers. So a simple "tunnelling system" was implemented that established where the visitor was in the sales cycle by understanding their previous activity on the website and also by interrogating the offline CRM system.
By doing this, VITES™ dropped people into the most appropriate tunnel and fed them tunnel specific content, imagery and, most importantly, applications.
Conversion rates rocketed. We had stumbled across a killer application for the web. In much the same way as Sergey Brin devised a method at Stanford University to "rank" sites in importance based on inbound links - which then became the basis for Google - we stumbled upon the link between recording and behaviour and predictive purchasing was born.
VITES™ 1.5
The original version was a killer. It doubled conversion rates overnight but it was very cumbersome to build sites around it and the clunky tunnels were flawed when it came to bookmarking and search engine maps. This needed addressing so a specification to improve the whole system was hastily put together in 2004 to meet these shortcomings.
This was a simpler beast to operate, more flexible, more powerful but still required hand cutting of the tunnels. We had tunnel vision!
VITES™ 2.x
We see the light in late 2005 and the move to visitor profiles is decided. The whole system needed to be rewritten and was completed by the middle of 2006. This included a number of innovations including profiles, rules and confidence ratings (how confident the system is that a person fits a profile).
The latest platform is developed 100% on the established LAMP platform and we started the task of rolling it out to the first 5 clients.
We're now 18 months down the track and development has been around stablising the product, documenting its operation and exploring its uses.
The tool
Soon after we launched VITES™ 2.x we realised that customers were coming up with great ways in which to use this tool. It became a very natural and easy tool to customise web content so sites could change at the weekend or overnight or when the call centre was busy.
Market leading online advertising companies became exposed to the technology and started sharing their data with VITES™ allowing it to make better decisions. We've only just scratched the surface with the VITES™ tool - there are a hundred or even a thousand more uses for it that we are yet to find.
2009 and beyond
We can carry the baton only so far so we are seeking out partners to develop and expand the capabilities of VITES™. If you have an idea about what you think VITES™ might be able to do then please contact us.