Decibel Insight, a U.K. startup that has built “digital experience analytics” tech to help large companies understand how individual customers interact with its websites and apps, has raised $9 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Eight Roads Ventures, with participation from John Simon, via his Ventureforgood investment entity.
Launched in 2014 and counting the likes of Lego, General Motors, Allstate Insurance, and Gucci as customers, Decibel Insight is an analytics platform to enable companies to track and measure digital customer experience. Powered by machine learning, its tech claims to automatically surface poor or unusual experiences.
Specifically, the analytics platform includes comprehensive reports, session replays, and data visualizations showing which parts of a site are performing well, which parts are being ignored, where users are dropping off and, crucially, why. This can then be fed back to the marketing and product teams to improve customer experience online and make sure the company isn’t missing a trick.
Asked to provide some examples of problems Decibel Insight can help spot, CEO Ben Harris says that a large U.K. retailer used the platform to increase its conversion rate by 70 per cent in a critical stage of the funnel. “Traditional analytics showed them there was dropout in the funnel during checkout, but it wasn’t until they used Decibel Insight that they were able to see why this was happening and fix the problem,” he says.
Likewise, I’m told that a leading British mobile network operator used Decibel Insight to increase sales for its product by 5 per cent after Decibel Insight’s machine learning algorithms alerted the company’s digital team that users were having a poor experience on its website. “The team used insights from Decibel to understand that its lengthy pages were causing confusion. They were able to test new layouts and measure performance,” says Harris.
Meanwhile, Decibel Insight, which is headquartered in the U.K., says it currently employs over 50 people in London, Boston and Denver and will use this first round of external capital to “scale the business and drive continued innovation through data science”.
Michael Treskow, Partner at Eight Roads Ventures, who will be joining the board, adds in a statement: “Websites are the shop window into modern businesses and Decibel Insight gives businesses the ability to truly understand their users’ online behavior. We are excited to partner with this ambitious bootstrapped team as they transform how companies track and improve customer experience.”