Angara E-Commerce Services is expected to launch today its E-Commerce Targeting Service that identifies visitors and delivers a more targeted version of a Web site.
Angara, based in Mountain View, CA, uses anonymous cookie-based profiles to identify new visitors to Web sites, and its partnerships with database providers, such as Naviant Inc., provide online demographic and geographic data. The service classifies users as being in a defined market segment, allowing the sites to better target information, products and services.
Greatcoffee.com, one of the first sites to test the service, saw a 100 percent improvement in customer conversion within the first two weeks of implementation.
The service proved extremely helpful in boosting international sales for example.
“International customers would come to the site and send us an e-mail asking if we ship internationally,” said Ron Walters, president of Greatcoffee.com, an online specialty coffee retailer based in San Francisco, “By the time we got back to them,” they had probably purchased coffee elsewhere.
Using the service, international users were identified and a message saying “welcome international customers” appeared. The message went on to mention that the site offers free shipping. As a result, “we've more than doubled our order rate internationally,” said Walters.
Angara's goal is to enable small to medium-size, business-to-consumer companies to convert browsers into buyers, said Richard Clayton, vice president of marketing for Angara E-commerce Services. “We want to retain them and up sell and cross sell them,” he said.
For a site such as Greatcoffee.com, which averages 50,000 visitors per month, converting sales is essential.
“Driving traffic is what most people think of for Internet marketing driving, but it's not really efficient if people come to the site and don't place an order,” said Walters.
The service, which can be fully implemented in two weeks, will partner with a number of new data providers within the coming months, according to Clayton. The fee for the service is $15,000 per month for 1 million visitors.
Angara is funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufiled & Byers, JMI Equities and several other venture capital firms.
