1. Alienware Transforms
Business with Omniture
$100 M Achieved over $100 in annual online sales
c a se s tudy
r etai l / Ma nu fact u ring
Overview
Alienware, a privately held company, was founded in 1996 by two friends who started out
building customized, high-end computers for their fellow gaming enthusiasts. Armed with
technical smarts, the pair saw a need to ratchet up the quality and capability of high-end
PCs in the marketplace and soon formed their own company. Based in Miami, Florida,
Alienware is known for its unique, innovative PC designs, with systems coming in a variety
of sizes, shapes and colors with certain products inspired by the look of the extraterrestrial
creatures in the classic science fiction movie, Alien. The company has quickly become a
key industry player, manufacturing high-performance desktop, notebook and media center
computer systems in the U.S. and Europe, and employing several hundred people. Once in
a niche gaming market, Alienware has expanded into mainstream markets including home
and home office, education, government, mobile computing, and creative services.

2. Location: Miami, Florida products: Omniture SiteCatalyst™, Omniture DARTmail™ Integration,
URL: www.alienware.com Omniture SearchCenter™, Omniture DataWarehouse™
industry: Retail/Manufacturing Omniture Discover™
Challenge Solution Results
• Gain deeper insight to analyze • Omniture SiteCatalyst selected • Over $100 million in annual
online channel for its best-in-class, hosted online sales
• Optimize online channel to drive analytics solution • Average online transaction
company growth • Omniture Discover delivers in- near $3,000
• Gain competitive advantage depth reporting analysis • 35 percent annual growth in
through advanced analytics • DARTmail Integration improves unique site visitors
• Improve e-mail marketing e-mail campaign execution • 105 percent annual increase in
effectiveness • Omniture SearchCenter simplifies online holiday sales
keyword marketing • $160,000 incremental
revenue through DARTmail
remarketing campaign
Challenge
Before deploying Omniture's online that would give our stakeholders—at ness. Recently, Alienware has
marketing services, Alienware had all levels—the insight to make quick, deployed Omniture's integration with
no real analytics solution in place. To smart decisions.” In a ferociously DoubleClick’s DARTmail service.
learn about online activity or visitor competitive PC hardware market “Omniture’s integration with DARTmail
behavior the company relied on crude with companies such as Dell, Sony gives Alienware a truly powerful, com-
Web log reports, which required and Gateway vying for market share, prehensive e-mail marketing platform,
manual processes of pulling and Alienware needed to find a way to tied into the industry’s leading Web
formatting raw data. “At that point, break through the ceiling to continue analytics tool, creating the opportunity
our online decisions were essentially its success trajectory in e-commerce. to develop truly effective segmented
based on guesswork, as true analytics marketing,” says Brown.
didn’t really exist,” says William Solution
Brown, director of e-commerce for To take their Internet retail business Results
Alienware. “We had no way to capture to the next level, Alienware turned to “The results have been phenomenal,”
and view Web traffic and its related Omniture in 2003 for its leading Web concludes Brown. “Omniture provides
commerce data in real-time. We didn’t analytics solution. “It was critical for us incredibly robust tools that have had
have the breadth of tools to evaluate to find the right partner and technology a profound impact on our business.”
the results of our online decisions.” set,” says Brown. “We wanted a best-in- Today, Alienware is selling over $100
The company had grown very quickly class solution that would become a key million annually through the online
over a span of seven years, but was foundation for growing our business. channel alone, with average transac-
seeing Web site conversion rates Our executives made the logical deci- tions near $3,000. Unique site visitors
gradually drop. “With 80 percent of sion to invest in Omniture, embracing are growing 35 percent year-over-
our business conducted online, not strategic e-commerce as a major prior- year. “The investments we’ve made in
understanding why customers were ity for the company.” Subsequently, Omniture have been completely justified
leaving the site without completing the company deployed Omniture in terms of ROI,” says Brown. “We are
a transaction was becoming a huge SiteCatalyst, Data Warehouse, Discover, constantly improving decision-making
missed opportunity,” declares Brown. and most recently, SearchCenter, creat- across such mission-critical functions as
“As a rapidly growing company, every ing a suite of analytics that has dramati- site design, email marketing, and online
single sale counts. We needed a tool cally impacted all aspects of the busi- media. Omniture gives us the tools to

3. With Omniture, we’ve gained tremendous insight into our customer base, which has
literally transformed our business. We’re selling over $100 million annually through the
online channel alone, and unique site visitors are increasing 35 percent a year.
William Brown, director of e-commerce, Alienware Corporation
optimize consumer demand-generation and ‘Cyber Monday’ shopping weekend previous days’ site activity and results,
and conversion activities.” in November 2005. “This is the biggest along with a comparable period. For
online shopping weekend of the year, our busy executives, this ‘executive
Omniture SiteCatalyst has given and we wanted to make the most of it,” summary’ provides them easy access
Alienware new insights and a deeper says Brown. And they did. Alienware to the information they need. If they
understanding of their customers, increased weekend sales by 105 percent need to go deeper, more detailed real-
which has made them a more com- compared to the prior year’s five-day time data is just a click away, so they
petitive company. “One of the great period. “With real-time data delivered can make on the spot decisions that
things about Omniture is that you can through Omniture, we turned our strat- can influence customer behavior in a
see—in real time—what your custom- egies and tactics towards products or matter of minutes.”
ers are doing and what your customers promotions that were really working
are thinking. In the ‘offline world’, you well on the site to maximize sales,” With Omniture, Alienware has been
often have to be clairvoyant—a mind says Brown. “Using Omniture reports, able to do more with less. “Omniture
reader—to understand what drives key performance indicators, alerts and is so easy to run and so easy to use,”
a customer to make a purchase or other tools within the system, we had says Brown. “We can access it from any
not. In the ‘online world’—with Web real-time data to support decisions, Web browser. The tool allows us to do
analytics—you can identify the fac- changing and tweaking site content to so much without additional overhead.”
tors that lead to a purchase decision. optimize sales. We identified hot-selling For a company its size, Alienware has
With the right tools, you can monitor products such as our high-end Area-51 a lean analytics department. “With
customer activity, from the initial visit notebooks, gave them better site vis- a hosted solution, we don’t have to
to a purchase or abandonment, every ibility and online media promotion, and worry about software updates or main-
step of the way. There’s an opportunity watched sales spike before our eyes. We tenance. We don’t need to become
for direct learning from every visitor could also see what price point custom- experts in building an analytics software
who comes to our site. With Omniture, ers were responding to, and make the platform. Instead, we can just focus on
we’ve gained tremendous insight into appropriate changes.” Alienware had building upon the Alienware e-com-
our customer base, which has literally its best month ever, with record-break- merce success story and getting the
transformed our business. Having the ing site traffic, conversion rates, and most out of the tool. We trust Omniture
ability to look at real-time data in a revenue. “We were able to fully leverage 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
highly intuitive, graphical format has our online media investments into maxi- year-round to track the status of our
allowed Alienware to maintain our mum ROI.” global e-commerce business.”
competitive advantages over our well-
heeled competitors.” Omniture Pays Off in Spades
SiteCatalyst has been rapidly adopted
Alienware established a high-profile by users throughout the enterprise,
partnership with Lucas Films, whereby as it monitors the Miami-based site “ e are constantly
W
Alienware built and sold the first official and other company sites in the United
Star Wars PC, the Aurora 7500 Star Wars Kingdom, France and Germany. Brown
improving decision-making
Edition. The company invested heavily says there are approximately 30 total across such mission-
in this initiative with Lucas, building a employees using the tool in Miami as
custom-designed PC with a unique Star well as in their Athlon, Ireland subsid- critical functions as site
Wars look-and-feel. Customers could iary office—with even more stakehold-
choose one of two models, a “dark side” ers receiving specific reports delivered
design, email marketing,
model associated with dark characters by email worldwide. With a dedicated and online media.
in the movie or a “light side” model in analytics team as well as six to ten
a light color scheme. Alienware used ‘power’ users throughout the company, Omniture gives us the
Omniture to track visitor behavior with SiteCatalyst is spreading insightful tools to optimize consumer
this strategic product, and quickly uncov- data to improve business perfor-
ered a startling insight: dark side systems mance. Viewing customized charts and demand-generation and
were outselling light side models by a reports through intuitive dashboards,
ratio of 15 to one. This fresh insight from Alienware’s executive team is engaging conversion activities.”
SiteCatalyst rippled through Alienware the tool and viewing analytics daily to
and the company was able to quickly keep their fingers on the pulse of the
adjust its product development, supply business. Customized dashboards are
chain assets, marketing and manufactur- sent to executives via e-mail for simple,
ing plans to meet the demands of the quick viewing. “Our executives are
marketplace and maximize sales. looking at Omniture reports every day,”
Using SiteCatalyst, Alienware had an says Brown, “Dashboards are automat-
overwhelmingly successful ‘Black Friday’ ically sent every morning showing the

4. Omniture at the Center of the Warehouse into DARTmail. We are reasons, which will lead to theories that
Marketing Services Ecosystem now able to tailor permission-based will allow us to fix the problem faster.”
Alienware has also deployed e-mail remarketing campaigns based
DoubleClick DARTmail, which is tightly on visitor behavior, which enables us to The company also uses Omniture
integrated with Omniture to provide push more relevant, targeted promo- SearchCenter, which brings all keyword
new insight into e-mail marketing tions with improved conversion rates.” search campaigns and performance
campaigns. The company can now metrics into a single interface that con-
analyze all e-mail campaigns through For example, in response to a DART e- solidates and optimizes keyword market-
one interface: SiteCatalyst. “We’ve seen mail campaign promoting two popular ing. With SearchCenter, Alienware is
fantastic initial results. Our first month Alienware notebooks, Brown’s team beginning to manage, through one inter-
of use brought in several million dollars used Omniture analytics to identify face, bid management activities across
in revenue” says Brown of the inte- 36,000 respondents who were passively Google, Yahoo! and MSN, and can eas-
grated solution. “We’ve also been able interested in the offering (those who ily view return on ad spend per keyword
to determine—for the first time—what clicked on a prior e-mail link but did not and monitor performance.
percentage of our overall revenue is ultimately purchase a certain high-end
attributed to DARTmail campaigns.” notebook). Brown, sensing that these Omniture has provided all the support
customers were very interested, crafted and training needed to help Alienware
In evaluating e-mail marketing vendors, a ‘follow-on’ e-mail campaign to those get the most out of its investment in Web
the major selling point for DoubleClick individuals with a special incentive. analytics. Alienware’s relationship with
was their strategic relationship with The results were outstanding, as the Omniture has been enhanced by the out-
Omniture,” recalls Brown. “With all campaign brought in over $160,000 in standing results delivered by Omniture
the technical integration worked out incremental revenue or $4.40 in rev- Professional Services. “The professional
between the two companies, deploying enue per every email sent. “This is the services group goes over and above the
DARTmail was like turning on a light complete solution that online marketers call of duty to help us make the most of
switch.” The tight integration enables have been waiting for,” Brown said. the tool,” says Brown. “As for develop-
better campaign execution and new ment, the self-paced training library is
analysis, closing the information gap Alienware Goes Deeper with an outstanding resource for new hires,
between Alienware’s two most criti- Newest Omniture Offerings and keeps our people up to speed on
cal online channels: Web and e-mail. Alienware is also using Omniture the product and all its capabilities.
“The integration opens up a whole new Discover and Omniture SearchCenter There are few vendors that have the
window of insight for us to understand to gain more insight into user behavior resources that Omniture University
user behavior around e-mail market- and maximize their online investments. offers, which means our team can keep
ing campaign and drive incremen- “Discover takes us to the next level learning and improving.”
tal revenue,” says Brown. “Without of data for more advanced analysis,
Omniture, DoubleClick could only tell providing us with a powerful business “The devil is in the details,” concludes
me that someone bought something. intelligence platform. With its intuitive Brown. “If you don’t have clear visibility
But tied to Omniture analytics, I can interface, we can look at data to ana- into every investment you make on
now investigate how a visitor reached lyze our customers and their behaviors the Web, how can you possibly know if
my site, what steps they took before at a more granular level. It gives us you’re improving or doing everything
purchasing—such as carting a product access to information we can act on possible to drive the consumer experi-
but abandoning before checkout—and right away, improving our effective- ence and conversion? Omniture per-
then use this information to remar- ness. For example, if there are drops in meates everything we do here and we
ket to these customers by pumping conversions for a certain product, we anticipate continuing a great working
custom reports from Omniture Data can use Discover to determine causal relationship going forward.”
www.omniture.com
1.877.722.7088 info@omniture.com EMEA + 44.845.226.1205
About Omniture Omniture, Inc., headquartered in Orem, Utah, is the pioneer of on-demand Web analytics technology that delivers the essential
intelligence needed by Web commerce leaders and innovators to drive the business decisions that increase ROI. Omniture is the largest on-demand Web
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