A heatmap using Zarget
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the boring name for an essential task: figuring out what online tweaks will lead to more sales.
This week, Walnut, California-based startup Zarget is launching what it says is a new approach to this necessary chore — the first browser plugin-based CRO tool. The company is also announcing it has raised $1.5 million in a seed fund round led by Accel Partners and Matrix Partners.
Unlike other CRO tools that require the loading of a website into the application, CEO and co-founder Arvind Parthiban told me, Zarget provides A/B testing, heatmaps and funnel analyses of a live site through a Chrome browser plugin that works on any platform. Like his two co-founders, Parthiban is a former employee of online office suite Zoho.
This means that heatmaps, which visualize the most-clicked areas of a page (see image at top of this page), can be rendered in real time, rather than on top of the screen grab that other tools present. Dynamic page elements, like scrolling image carousels or drop-down menus, can also be tracked via Zarget’s heatmap, which is not easy to do if you’re working with static images.
Parthiban also pointed out that other A/B testing tools load the testing site into an iFrame window in the browser and cannot readily proceed past the gate of a login screen, while his company’s platform, as a live testing tool, can.
And, he said, Zarget is the “only tool in the market” to offer heatmaps, A/B testing and funnel analysis in one. Funnel analysis is a method for tracking user activities that lead toward a goal, in this case, a sale.
Parthiban told me that only one other tool he’s encountered, called heatmap.me, claims to support dynamic heatmaps, although he added he’s been unable to get it to work. Like other CRO tools, Zarget requires some JavaScript in the header of the web pages, but Parthiban said no coding is required.
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