CANDDi, developers of analytics software that lets websites create profiles of individual visitors, which can then be used to customize the site and improve conversion, has announced that it has picked up a £370,000 round of funding led by repeat investor Northstar Ventures (£250k in mixed debt and equity from its Accelerator fund), with participation also from a number of strategic angels including a Google executive, and the entrepreneurs behind e-commerce sites TravelSupermarket and DiscountVouchers. The total raised to date by Newcastle-based CANDDi — short for Campaign and Digital Intelligence — is £539,000 ($870,000).
The company will be using the funding to expand its product and business development: to date, the company has been focusing on “high value, low volume” sites that may see less traffic but sell higher-value goods — for example, existing CANDDi customers include companies in the insurance and banking/financial sectors. Going forward, CMO Tom Cheesewright tells me, CANDDi wants to extend that product to cover more high-volume, lower-value sites — for example in the retail sector.
In both cases, the need for better customer analytics, and better personalization to improve visitor conversions is a big area at the moment, with sites like Twitter and Facebook also focusing on how to create and better measure engagement — not just unique visitor numbers. As users become more de-sensitized to online marketing, it seems like the metric that will get the most focus from advertisers and online businesses will be the one that proves their marketing is actually working.
CANDDi’s funding today follows other news from the company: earlier this month it appointed ex-sales Googler Fred Abrard as its new sales manager.
Among the angel investors in today’s round, are Chris Nixon, the former MD of Travelsupermarket.com and Kelkoo Travel; Clement Schvartz, EMEA Large Customer Sales, Director, Google; Doug Scott, the founder of CarRentals.co.uk and DiscountVouchers.co.uk; and Tim O’Shea, the founder, Blurtit & Mindcom Investments. Nixon, Scott and Schvartz are also coming on board as advisors.
The company has been around since 2009 but it seems like it is just finally finding its niche in terms of meeting a need in the current market for more intelligence and web analytics, something noted by CANDDi chief executive Tim Langley as the company turns to bigger volume prospects: “The last twelve months have been spent proving the value of CANDDi Prospect Analytics with customers in the finance, B2B marketing and automotive sectors. Now we plan to take our product to market much more aggressively,” he noted in a statement.