WebSideStory’s Publish is a WCM system based on technology acquired from Atomz in February 2005 that lets online marketers to create and post content on web sites without the need to have an intimate knowledge of HTML.

The latest version, Publish 4.0 now blends metrics from WebSideStory’s core HBX web analytics system. Integration is facilitated via the company’s Stream API integration layer. This means that analytics of web site behavior that is sourced from the HBX engine can directly be used to influence content presentation and positioning on web sites beyond simplistic alphabetical listings — for example, displaying most popular pages accessed, most popular search terms, and top downloads, or determining the order of FAQs relating to support issues is presented.

The software automatically generates HBX analytics tags for web page content whenever it is created in Publish 4.0 for ease of analysis.

WebSideStory’s assumption here is that popular content is the most compelling content on a website, and holds most authority. It refers to this as wisdom of the crowds.

The overriding goal is to create more sticky websites and drive lead generation and better customer loyalty.

The move follows a strategy to embed HBX analytics into all the components of its on-demand WebSideStory Suite which comprises of HBX web analytics, Search, Keyword Bid Management and Publish modules.

In April this year the company announced a similar integration with its Search 4.0 product to use the HBX analytics engine to drive more accurate and relevant search results. Search 4.0 now comes with Active Ranking that helps online marketers to automatically drive search results based on web site behavior.

Other new features included in Publish 4.0 include enhanced content integration with external sources like RSS feeds, databases, news wires, etc that can automatically be baked into websites.

The integration capabilities are similar to those provided by Yahoo! and Amazon that help keep their websites up to date with new content that is continually being published and sourced from other sites.

Publish 4.0 also offers a new PHP-based templating tool for more sophisticated content creation and generating slick content navigation schemes and site maps.

The templates can link back to HBX to generate a site map structure that based on analytic criteria such as most popular content.

Finally, WebSideStory has also standardized Publish 4.0’s user interface to make it consistent with the rest of the WebSideStory Suite.

Publish is being used by around 60 companies today, including the YMCA and Fila.

Pricing starts at $30,000 per year for a single website and five users and requires a mandatory training module to be purchased as well. The cost escalates according to the number of websites and users.

Steve Kusmer, general manager and senior vice president of WebSideStory’s search and content solutions division, said the notion of analytics-driven WCM is a first among web analytics vendors in the industry and a continuation of an integration strategy the firm set into motion around one and half years ago to create a broad, yet tight knit Web analytics suite.

Kusmer said that all of WebSideStory’s products, including those it acquired from Atmoz and Visual Sciences are now integrated with each other in some capacity

With the launch of Publish 4.0 the first round of integration we started between our products is now complete.

However innovation still continues according to Melissa Purcell, director of product marketing at WebSideStory.

Last month, San Diego, California-based WebSideStory announced Active Browsing, a technology that lets companies integrate AJAX into their site search results for greater user interactivity.

We’re innovators and the architectural changes we’re introducing into our platform like PHP sets us up for more innovations going forward, she said.

Over the past three years we’ve invested heavily in building our API so that third parties can pull information out of our platform, despite being on-demand.