Japanese data-driven web and native app optimization startup secures $4M

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Uncover Truth, the company offering a data analytics-based web and native app optimization service called Userdive, announced on Tuesday that it has secured around 400 million yen (about 4 million) in the latest round. This round was led by Draper Nexus Ventures with participation from Nippon Venture Capital, Cyper Agent, Accord Ventures, and Mizuho Capital. The company has not disclosed any financial details including shareholdings ratio and payment date upon fundraising.

Userdive shows UI/UX (user interface and user experience) problems in a website for its owners by plotting them in a heat map. There are two services provided, Userdive for web apps (for desktop and mobile) and Userdive for native apps (for mobile). With these tools, as one example, it is possible to see where users mostly leave in an e-commerce site.

In addition, the company consults businesses using these tools, offering support services starting from identifying challenges to solving them through a PDCA cycle. These businesses include over 300 big names, such as Fuji Film (TSE:4901), Benesse Corporation (TSE:9783), and Nifty.

Uncover Truth plans to use the funds raised to advance their services by strengthening their consulting personnel, directors, and developers. To this aim they plan to double their current number of 30 team members.

userdive-pdca-cycleBeginning with Google Analytics, using analytics tools as a means to improve websites is only natural. On the other hand, we have merely heard of website managers making full use of these tools to improve the day to day usage of their website. Instead, in nearly all cases it seems customary to outsource to web production companies, ad agencies, or consulting firms for the optimization process.

According to Keizo Ishikawa, the CEO of Uncover Truth, the company has grown by offering customers with these analysis tools to visualize challenges and then providing consulting services.

Take IDOM (formerly Gulliver International) for example, a used car sales company that put effort into their digital marketing. Through website improvements and accompanying support from Userdive, they succeeded in improving their monthly gross profit by 10 million yen (nearly $100,000). Although, for this level of support the large numbers of analysts and directors necessary for consulting are not very scalable, which is unsuitable for internet business.

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Uncover Truth CEO Keizo Ishikawa

Ishikawa also understands this drawback. He explained:

Our company so far is supporting everything from log analysis to the execution of plans A and B. The inability of companies to improve their websites is either due to the lack of skills or the lack of time. On the other hand, as you indicated, human consulting will not disappear, and so the automation of that will become our challenge to scale for the future.

Thus the team came up with a route to uncover problems in an efficient manner. According to Ishikawa, it usually takes an analyst anywhere from 20 to 50 hours to analyze one user flow of one website. If they can find a way to reduce this time even by a few seconds, it would lead to a considerable bump in efficiency.

From examples of past improvement cases, it has become possible for Userdive to some extent to grasp what kinds of data are produced and what kind of challenges websites face. Utilizing these types of data, they plan to use the funds to further develop a new system. In the event that this works well, they will be able to point out a website’s problems during the sign-up stage (before a full-scale detection of problems after the sign-up process), and possibly even more easily attract prospective users.

So to speak, they aim for early detection of website “cancer”, much in the same way a doctor recognizes it in his patients.

Their service is available for 700,000 yen (about $7,000) monthly, for companies looking to become a leading website and increase their monthly revenue on a million yen scale (around $10,000), as the aforementioned IDOM did.

Translated by Amanda Imakaka
Edited by Masaru Ikeda