Website analytics firm ClickTale sees 50 pct annual sales growth
* Sales total tens of millions of dollars a year
* Customers include CBS, Domino's Pizza, Deutsche Bank
By Tova Cohen
TEL AVIV, Nov 11 (Reuters) - ClickTale, whose software enables website owners to see how people behave on their sites, expects to maintain an annual sales growth rate of over 50 percent in the next few years as companies seek to improve their customers' experience.
"Sales have grown by thousands of percent over the last six years to tens of millions of dollars a year," co-founder and Chief Executive Tal Schwartz told Reuters. "The growth rate is over 50 percent year over year."
The company raised $17 million in April from London-based Amadeus Capital Partners and Goldrock Capital in Israel, marking its first cash injection since attracting an initial $800,000 in seed money in 2007 and becoming profitable quickly.
ClickTale is a complementary solution to Google's Analytics or Adobe, said Schwartz.
"If Google Analytics gives a map of who visited where, ClickTale tells you what they did," he said. "If you see people start a purchase process and then leave, you can understand why they leave and make changes to increase the conversion rate."
It has more than 80,000 customers, including CBS, Abercombie & Fitch, Domino's Pizza and Deutsche Bank.
Competitors include giants such as IBM, which bought customer experience management firm Tealeaf. Tealeaf's software must be installed on a server while ClickTale provides cloud-based software as a service.
"Our customers have been able to get hundreds of percent improvement in their conversion rate," said Schwartz, noting the company also has products for mobile interaction that track gestures on any touch interface.
While many customers are consumer sites, some are news sites whose goal is to get people to read more articles.
ClickTale, which has 150 employees, will use the funds raised to hire 30-40 engineers and open an office in New York in the first quarter of 2014.
Schwartz, who sold his previous company Expand Beyond Corp to Semotus Corp, is not seeking to sell ClickTale.
"We think we can be a big business; that's the goal," he said. "Based on demand in the market place I know this is going to be a big category. There is an awareness of how important the customer experience is."
