Inside lets you see inside

I don’t promote many third-party technologies.

This technology – from a Sydney-based company Inside  – is pretty cool however.

You get a real-time visualisation of what your customers are doing.

Where they are on your website; buying, at FAQs, searching, whatever.

You can even see comments they’re writing on Twitter and Facebook.

You can set triggers to alert your team – on Live Chat – to reach out when a scenario is met: the user has a certain cart value, the user has something in their cart though is looking at your terms and conditions.

I was initially sceptical of the visualisation, though it has grown on me.

Your users look like customers and your support staff will see it that way, chasing them down.

Pretty cool.

Update to this blog

After writing this blog, a client sent me an email with a feed relevant to post as an update to this blog.

My client runs one of Australia’s largest eCommerce websites and so the feedback is very relevant.

My client thinks Inside is pretty cool, but that user session ‘replay network appliances’ (example technologies include Pion and Foresee are more practical; appliances and technologies that replay how users interacted with your store rather than giving real-time and actionable insight such as Inside.

(A demo of one such session ‘replay’ device provides an interesting look into to just how the ‘replay’ technology works.)

A product such as Inside and the session ‘replay’ devices my client talks of are different in that one is real-time designed for real-time interaction whilst the second is about looking back and learning; similar though different purposes for the technologies.

Both technologies relevant and damn interesting nonetheless.

Whether one or both technologies will come down to your needs and eCommerce/website business.

My client also made the very interesting point that according to an article on well-respected eConsultancy six months back, investing in ‘replay’ devices and technologies was the lowest in the list of eCommerce investments according to surveys of eCommerce website owners eConsultancy had conducted, despite the fact that such technologies had the ‘highest perceived return’ for those eCommerce websites using it.

This will change as the technology emerges and becomes understood.

These technologies are the next wave in eCommerce and analytics; watching our customers in real-time and reaching out to them and/or watching what they did and improving from it.

Whatever your need, start to look into it.