WalkMe, an online guidance system that developers can plug into websites to create widgets that help walk users through their services, is today announcing that it has picked up a further $5.5 million in funding to continue expanding its business. This round includes investment from Gemini Israel Ventures, existing investor Mangrove Capital Partners (which put in $1 million earlier this year) and Giza Venture Capital.
Since going live in April of this year, WalkMe’s CEO Dan Adika says that it has signed up “thousands” of sites to its service.
Its success comes from a mix of trends. Although we all become a lot more savvy about what works and what doesn’t on the web, websites as a whole are gravitating to having less in-and-out traffic and more longer-term engagement from those who do come to the site. On top of that, a lot more interactivity is being put into sites, but often to a confusing end, where site visitors are concerned.
WalkMe aims to speak to both of those issues with its on-screen widgets that help direct users by way of “walk-throughs” of different features. (I once called this the website equivalent of Clippy from Microsoft Word and was handily taken to task for this; essentially both are on-screen assistants.)
WalkMe also part of the bigger trend of services that act as “personal assistants” as we continue to navigate our way through the maze of technology that surrounds us today. Other services in the vein are GPS in the world of mapping and Siri on the iPhone. It’s likely that we will see many more of these “helping” apps and services appear in the years to come.
It’s the combination of website pain-points and this trend for personal assistants that is what attracted funding to WalkMe:
“WalkMe is a disruptive system that can fundamentally change the way online services engage with their users online. WalkMe’s ability to increase visitor clarity, satisfaction and conversion while dramatically reducing help-desk costs, makes it a no-brainer for a business of any size,” said Eran Wagner, General Partner at Gemini Israel Ventures, in a statement. “We look forward to seeing WalkMe maintain its explosive growth and become an industry standard for guidance by replacing video-tutorials and help sections on websites – just as GPS systems have become a standard replacement for maps.”