Wherever there is data, there shall be analytics. In a move that makes a lot of sense, Taggstar, the interactive images platform that makes images shareable and shoppable (along with other interactivity), has rolled out a new analytics dashboard to enable publishers who use the service to get a detailed insight into how their Taggstar-enhanced images are performing.
Specifically, the new analytics tool lets publishers see which images are driving the highest levels of traffic and engagement, giving them a real-time view into things like unique views, dwell time, and the images that have been shared the most, along with trackback image data via social platforms such as Facebook, and a graphical image view of data over a period of time.
Publishers can also drill down deeper into images that have been ‘tagged’ with Taggstar hotspots, via a data subset within the dashboard that displays how long users have been looking at tags, click-through rates from tags, and the number of tagged image views.
The benefit of having access to Taggstar data in this way, says the company, is that publishers can now think more strategically about the images that they are using on their sites, and fine-tune those strategies accordingly. And in turn, extract more value from using Taggstar, which could add value to the startup itself.
As we’ve noted before, Taggstar’s competitors include Luminate, ThingLink and Stipple. Similar to those offerings it works by enabling publishers to add ‘hotspots’ to portions of an image so that when a reader clicks on those hotspots or hovers over them, additional content is revealed. This might include other relevant images or links, further text, or audio/visual material, such as embedded video or audio. In addition, images can be easily shared on Facebook and Twitter courtesy of a social-sharing toolbar on each image.
However, it’s the e-commerce or ‘shoppable’ element that Taggstar sees as its trump card, which works by turning any image into a mini-store, right there on the page using some clever colour swatch-matching tech and descriptive tags.
Taggstar was founded in 2010 and has raised £1.6 million (approx. $2.6m) in funding. Investors include Rob Hersov (Founder of Sportal and Marquis Jets), Sir Stuart Rose (Former Chairman of M&S), Dr. Thomas Middelhoff (Former Chairman of Thomas Cook and CEO of Bertelsmann), and Ariadne Capital’s ACE Fund.