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Blue Triangle Technologies |
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August 3, 2015 Issue |
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The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
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eCommerce and mCommerce Management Solutions |
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CEO
Blue Triangle Technologies
Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – August 3, 2015
CEOCFO: Mr. Foss, what is the idea behind Blue Triangle Technologies? Mr. Foss: The basics behind Blue Triangle are simple. The user experience on websites is not always what we would like it to be, so as we continue to have more technology we are increasingly more impatient with what we see. However, we can show the organizations that are running enterprise eCommerce sites or even smaller sites, where users are becoming impatient or even dissatisfied with the experience on their website. We can also show these organizations where they have revenue leakage and what the ROI on a per-piece basis is to get that revenue back. This enables them to have strategic intelligence and make data driven decisions on where to work on their site, where to prioritize, and what the revenues could be if they were to take certain actions.
CEOCFO: Does it surprise you that so many companies do not seem to have a clue as to how poorly their website is running? Mr. Foss: It depends on whom in the company you are talking about. If you were to separate companies into operations focus verses business management, the operations teams technically have a pretty good idea of what might be wrong, but those in business management may or may not. Even then, whether a website is slow or fast, there is not always a simple number to which you can point. What we have found is that users interact with pages differently depending on what is on the page and then what they want to do with it, and that every site and every page on every site works a bit differently with the user. Some pages are about 4.5 to 5 seconds, and that may be fast enough and users are perfectly happy with it, whereas other pages are 2 seconds and users are still not happy with it. Therefore, you have to have the data and measure that in order to have that information. The operations teams may have an idea of how fast or slow it is, but they may not know what that means. The business teams may not even know what those numbers represent in terms of actual performance in seconds on their website. However, it comes down to what that means in terms of how much money the company is making and what they need to do to maximize revenue.
CEOCFO: How are you able to put it together for a client? Mr. Foss: We have a tag based solution that looks at the experience that every user that is on the site is having on every page of the website, in real-time. Our tag looks at the experience they are having and then sends telemetry back to Blue Triangle in real-time while they are still on their website. One way we can utilize this information is by looking at historical trends that we run that through a predictive analytics engine and show on a page by page basis what the target speed of the page should be in order to maximize conversion rates. Sometimes that target speed may not be easily achievable. We also show you the ROI of achieving that target speed and we have an available “What if?” analysis calculator on our website. Then, we can ask questions such as “If I can move 70% of my users to 3.5 seconds instead of 4.5 seconds, what will that do for me from a ROI perspective?” Another way we can utilize this information is through our product that we just announced at the Velocity Conference called Conversion Boost. With this product, since we are doing real-time analytics, we can signal to the website on a per-user basis that this specific user has a percentage likelihood of leaving the site because of the user experience that they are getting. That probability is integrated into a score that shows that some action should be taken to try to improve their experience while they are still on the site. The difference between the two is historic data and real-time data.
CEOCFO: Blue Triangle is the pioneer in this field. Are there other companies trying to do the same thing or is the technology a major barrier to entry? Mr. Foss: For any market space, being the first to enter that space has its challenges. Being the first to market always sounds great, but it has inherent challenges with education. Investors have asked me about competition and what keeps me up at night – my reply being that not having a competitor in the space has caused me to lose sleep. Just recently, a new competitor has entered the space, trying to emulate some of what we are doing. However, we are looking at data in real-time, whereas other competitors are looking at things in a different way such that they do not provide the detail and precision that Blue Triangle offers.
CEOCFO: How do you gain attention? We talk so much about analytics, measurement and big data? How do get people to look at what you have to offer? Mr. Foss: We do not talk about big data because it is just a buzz word and it is really just behind the scenes technology, which we are not selling. What we are selling is BI or Business Intelligence. In a way, we are a combination of web performance analytics and business intelligence. If you are talking about standing out from the crowd or getting a small company noticed at all, that is primarily done through digital marketing guerilla style as well as attending the appropriate conferences where the target audience we want to see will actually be there. Secondly, once we have someone’s attention or someone that we can talk to, the easiest way to ensure that we have their undivided attention is to do a trial. In a trial, we can actually show them data from a few of their pages that have large amounts of revenue that could be recovered if they were to make improvements to these pages.
CEOCFO: Has there been any skepticism? Mr. Foss: Early on, we had people that would ask us if our technology was real or black magic. That was an obstacle that had to be overcome very early on. However, we have been able to demonstrate multiple times with a library of case studies that our data is accurate and relevant. We have been able to show where they had made changes and where our prediction of what the change would do held true with a mere 10% error. The more case studies we do, the more predictive data gains credibility and becomes believable. In addition, we can talk about some of our customers who are rather marquee. It is hard to say that industry leaders are doing something that is not real or believing data that is not real.
CEOCFO: You have just recently introduced your Conversion Boost product. What is that adding to the mix? Mr. Foss: Typically, when you are looking at data, you are always looking at historical data, which is great for printing charts, visualizations, and looking at the past. Since we are analyzing this data in real-time, instead of looking at past customers that did not convert on your website because of the poor experience, Blue Triangle can tell you if your customer is having a poor experience while he or she is on your website. We can then give you a score indicating the probability that they may or may not stay on your site, which would allow you to adapt your website to give them a faster experience and make them want to stay there. In real-time, we can keep a user from leaving by knowing that they are having a poor experience and enabling the site to improve that experience for the individual user. You are not changing the site as a whole; you are dealing with one user at a time.
CEOCFO: Do you provide any suggestions as to how an enterprise can make use of your technology to effect change in real-time? Mr. Foss: What we are providing is the trigger and yes, we have already provided some suggestions beforehand during the onboarding process as to what eCommerce managers need to do to make use of the information we are providing. We are also working on a theory that takes the concept of responsive design, which everyone thinks of as simply being if the website looks good on a mobile phone, tablet or desktop. However, is responsive design really just about your device type and whether or not it is a touch screen? Can you be responsive to the user’s poor experience and adapt yourself to their needs on the fly? We are working on partnerships with technology providers who perform optimizations so that they can receive the trigger, understand it, and be able to make changes on the fly to increase or decrease the performance of the page or take out certain elements that may not be useful to the user at that time. Doing this will provide an increased conversion and retention rate. These are providers who already have technology that can change the page in real-time. Currently, they are dealing with a website as a whole, but now we can provide them data to help them adapt to an individual use on the site and keep the customer from abandoning.
CEOCFO: What can a company do if they do not invest in one of these providers? Mr. Foss: We are writing a JavaScript library as an example for responsive design that could demonstrate this inside the browser itself, if you are not using one of these optimization services.
CEOCFO: You are really looking to make a change! Mr. Foss: People always talk about how startups and entrepreneurs are looking to change the world. We have taken a small piece of that, which has been an ongoing problem for years, and done something about it. People assume that the internet is getting faster with new technology. However, as people keep putting more and more content on their website and making them larger, page response time is frequently slower than it was in 2000 or 2005. Therefore, there is still room for improvement and we are trying to shine a light on how it can be done and how it can change the marketplace overall for users to have better eCommerce experiences.
CEOCFO: Are you funded for the next steps or are you seeking additional funding? Mr. Foss: We are funded for right now, but we are looking at doing a Series-A sometime in the second half of this year. That would be used for expansion in the sales and marketing side.
CEOCFO: Why pay attention to Blue Triangle Technologies? Mr. Foss: People need to pay attention to what Blue Triangle is doing simply because we are changing the way that the marketplace works with user experience and online shopping. If people want their websites to stay competitive with companies that are not using our technology, they are going to have no choice but to try to implement something similar. There will be more people in our market space trying to compete with us and some people may try to do this on their own. This is strategic information: knowing how much revenue is at risk on a page-by-page basis, allowing business leadership teams to make strategic decisions on how to prioritize projects and budgets, keeping users on the site in real-time. Every eCommerce, financial, travel, and hospitality website will want to have these capabilities. |
“People assume that the internet is getting faster with new technology. However, as people keep putting more and more content on their website and making them larger, page response time is frequently slower than it was in 2000 or 2005. Therefore, there is still room for improvement and we are trying to shine a light on how it can be done and how it can change the marketplace overall for users to have better eCommerce experiences.” - Donald Foss
Blue Triangle Technologies
Contact: (804) 569-6054 Donald.foss@bluetriangletech.com
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Donald
Foss