Big Data specialist QuBit is planning to build its presence in the US and mainland Europe after raising $7.5m (£4.65m) in funding.
The new investment in the London-headquartered customer data platform provider comes from Balderton Capital, whose general partner Bernard Liautaud will be joining QuBit’s board.
QuBit works with retailers including Arcadia Group, John Lewis and Staples, as well as the BBC and FT.com. It uses advanced big data collection and analysis to inform website optimisation and personalisation, and the new funding will also be used to market its new SaaS platform and develop further its tag management product.
The company was founded by four former Google product, marketing and engineering executives and says that it has added more than 1,000 customers to its SaaS platform in 2012, helping revenues to grow by 300%.
Graham Cooke, chief executive of QuBit, said: “Our technology is about driving website efficiency and that’s a compelling message in a market where competition is getting more and more intense.
“Buyers are shopping around more, traffic is getting more expensive and purchase cycles are becoming longer. Our products help site owners to understand their customers and to seamlessly act upon that understanding to drive revenue and profit.
“To get the backing of an organisation like Balderton is a strong validation of our business and our technology.”
Bernard Liautaud, general partner, Balderton Capital, said: “QuBit is applying big data techniques to the web analytics and optimisation space, bringing together two of the most important technologies right now.
“What’s most impressive with the QuBit approach is that they’ve created more than a point solution; they’ve already developed a comprehensive suite of products that let website owners collect, understand and act upon the huge amounts of data generated by customer interaction with their websites.”
The news comes as QuBit unveils a new platform that it says takes website personalisation to a new level.
“QuBit is changing the meaning of web personalisation,” said Cooke. “This isn’t just about serving up some automated recommendations or showing you things you’ve purchased recently, it’s about using specific data to treat each visitor as an individual and personalise their experience accordingly. This could change everything – a website is no longer a set of static pages broadcasting content to everyone, it becomes a living, dynamic thing that speaks to each user individually based on what works best for them.
“What’s really powerful is that QuBit’s platform puts this capability into the hands of the marketer. Creating a personalised experience based on data analysis is no longer some extended, expensive interaction between data scientists, marketers and developers, it’s something a marketer could do from a single platform in a few minutes.”
