VentureBeat: Startup Convert Insights to help smaller online vendors better target visitors

Today editor Nadia Majid from VentureBeat published an article on Convert Insights. This in relation to the launch of our Beta. See full article below.

Startup Convert Insights to help smaller online vendors better target visitors

Behavioral targeting engine Convert Insights has just launched a beta test of its service. It’s one of a number of engines that promise to help companies better target services and ads to consumers online. When a consumer waivers on buying something, for example, an analysis of past users’ behavior may show that free shipping or a discount will make the sale more likely to happen quickly.

Convert Insights’s engine focuses on small and medium-sized businesses that generate more than $5,000/month from their website. Convert Insights claims it can increase website conversion rates by 5-10% within the first month and that it can increase online revenue by customizing the experience for website visitors. For example, a website may offer discounted shipping for users who have visited the website three times without purchasing anything, or they can be presented with a limited-time discount.

Competitors include Omniture, Tacoda, and Wunderloop but these companies focus on high-volume transaction sites. “Our system levels the playing field so smaller websites or blogs can get the kind of conversion rates that have only been possible on multi-million dollar sites with complex back-end systems,” said Convert Insights CEO Dennis van der Heijden. “We know we want to make a real difference for the millions of online businesses that have a good number of visitors and know they can get more out of their existing visitor base but just do not have thousands of dollars to spend on a new onsite behavioral targeting tool.” After the free beta period concludes and the system becomes available to the public, it will sell for under $100/month, with pricing scaled to match a website’s visitor volume.

Website operators only need to add some code to their sites to get started. “The SaaS tool is for everyone to try, from individuals selling a few products on their blog to medium-sized retailers with a catalog of thousands of products,” van der Heijden says.

Convert Insights, based in Menlo Park, Calif., will be sending out 100 beta invites by next week and will release more as needed. It plans to give out a total of 1000 invites by the end of the month. In the 3 hours after their press release came out, 60 sites had already signed up, according to van der Heijden. The beta launch comes after 6 months of testing on 10 medium-sized businesses.

The company is currently funded by seed capital from a group of private investors.

Source: VentureBeat