We’re happy to announce that Smartlook has received its SOC 2 Type II compliance certification. With the new certificate, we want to underline our effort towards better privacy and security standards of our clients’ data.

What is SOC 2 compliance?

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) established the Service Organization Control 2 (SOC 2) standard. 

SOC 2 certificate is a voluntary compliance standard that assesses the procedures and control processes in an organization. It simply sets an international standard for collecting and exchanging information.

There are two types of SOC 2 audit reports:

• Type I – describes the company’s systems and controls and the suitability of the design of those systems
• Type II – checks the operating effectiveness of systems described in the Type I report

While General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a gold standard for privacy compliance, SOC 2 holds the gold standard crown for security compliance. It’s especially important for companies that process any type of personal data.

An external auditor awards the SOC 2 certification after verifying the company’s compliance with 1 or more of the 5 trust service principles: 

• Privacy
• Security
• Availability
• Confidentiality
• Processing integrity

Smartlook’s approach to privacy and security

From day 1, at Smartlook, we’re fully aware of our responsibilities toward our customers, stakeholders, employees, and the communities we participate in. This is why we want to align our organization with the strictest set of standards available.

How we support our clients in privacy-compliance

Our tool was designed according to “privacy by design” principles. It means Smartlook supports your and your end users’ privacy by:

• Hiding sensitive data (wireframe mode, masking fields)
• Enabling personal data collection after a proactive sign from the user
• Anonymizing personal data or limiting its collection to the minimum by default

With those privacy safeguards in place, the tool gives you control over what type of data you track and collect. As a result, it’s easier for your business to stay in line with worldwide privacy regulations.

How we apply security measures to safeguard our clients’ data

We process our clients’ payments through a provider that is PCI Data Security Standard-compliant. It ensures that all transactions are protected.

In May 2021, Smartlook as a company became SOC 2 Type I-compliant. From December 2021, it’s also SOC 2 Type II-compliant. The external independent auditor examined Smartlook’s compliance with  the AICPA guidelines in accordance with  the ISAE 3000 standard.

We got certified in the 4 trust service principles, including:

• Privacy
• Security
• Availability
• Confidentiality

What does the SOC 2 certification mean for your business?

As a SaaS company, information security is of key importance. SOC 2 audit ensures that we securely manage your data and protect your interests. It also refers to the privacy of your end-users.

SOC 2 is another step in our journey towards full security compliance. The certification shows that companies of all sizes can trust our processes and controls around:

• Data security and privacy (access controls, endpoint protection, infrastructure)
• Software development (change management, vulnerability testing, disaster recovery plan (DRP))
• Corporate governance (laws and regulations compliance, confidentiality, HR management)

Our commitment to data security and further plans

Meeting SOC 2 compliance establishes a new quality for our customers, who have the assurance that their data is safe according to the latest industry standards. This standard applies to all companies, regardless of whether they are a small, medium or large enterprises.

SOC 2 audits are our ongoing commitment to improving our privacy and security practices. That’s why we’ll renew the SOC 2 Type II certification every year, so you know that your data is safe with us.

Joanna Kaminska

is a content marketing strategist at Smartlook. She is a seasoned writer interested in storytelling, SaaS and new technologies. Her goal is to create content that is easy to understand for all. After work, she enjoys hiking and nature photography. | LinkedIn profile

The post Smartlook is now SOC 2-compliant appeared first on Smartlook Blog.

Now, we can add another accomplishment to the list – we’ve been recognized and now feature on the Latka 250 Fastest Growing SaaS Company List!

Our whole story is about growth. In four years, we went from a free tool that would help anyone, regardless of their analytics skills, to a complex machine handling enterprise-level companies with enormous amounts of data to process. All of that when streamlining complex work with an intuitive interface and smart features.

We’re happy to be recognized as one of the 50 best software products in EMEA, Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Central Europe in 2019, and 20 Exciting European SaaS Companies with “Euro Vision”. We’re also incredibly proud about growing our team – to support our 300+k users! That translates into more than half of a billion sessions analyzed monthly. And there’s more to come, as we gained an investment of 3.6M dollars last fall.

In January 2020, our CEO Petr Janosik talked about our growth with Nathan Latka. You can listen to the podcast and get more information. Appearing on Latka’s list is a major accomplishment, as only 5% of companies that apply are selected to feature on the list!

Smartlook – in-depth analytics for websites, mobile apps, and games

Smartlook is a powerful analytics tool that enables you to understand your users’ behavior. With session recordings, heatmaps, event tracking, and funnels you can do the following:

• Understand how people use your website or app
• Look out for errors and bugs
• Learn what lowers your conversion rate
• Watch only the most important parts of the recordings
• Combine the data with your CRM and boost your customer support
• Work together on the analytics by sharing recordings with others

All of those features work best combined, so you can mark an event when watching a user recording, and then look it up in different sessions or add it to a funnel.

Enterprise-level clients challenged us to boost our possibilities. That’s where Smartlook NextGen enters the stage! It has even more power of processing huge amounts of data and handling large teams. With a big data package, API access, developer tools and focus on collaboration, it meets the most complex needs.

How the rankings work

Nathan Latka sold his SaaS company in 2015 before launching his SaaS CEO Podcast and database at GetLatka.com. Each year he gets revenue growth figures from SaaS CEOs and confirms the revenue via email with the CEO. The rankings take December 2019 monthly recurring revenue annualized (multiply by 12) and compare it to revenue 1 month ago (December 2020).

The companies are then split into three buckets since it’s easier to grow a $1m company 300% compared to a $10m company. The three categories are $1m-$10m, $10m-$20m, and $20m-$100m. 

In total, the top 250 companies achieve $8.5 billion in revenue, service 2.2 million customers, and have raised a total of $12 billion dollars. 

You can see a digital version of the top 250 SaaS companies here and find a more in-depth story on our growth in the March issue of Latka Magazine. 

Thanks to all of you for helping us land a spot in the Latka 250 for 2020. We look forward to another five years of helping you build your businesses!

Want to find out more?

• Rankings: https://getlatka.com/saas-companies/fastest-growing/revenue/2020 
• Visit us: https://getlatka.com/companies/smartlook

author Petr Vecek

Content Manager

The post Smartlook recognized on the Latka 250 Fastest Growing SaaS Company List appeared first on Smartlook Blog.

Brno December 2,  2020 – Smartlook is a start-up from Brno, Czech Republic, developing tools for analysing customer behaviour on websites or mobile apps. In what seems to be a very memorable autumn, the start-up separated itself from the original company Smartsupp and also gained an investment of 3.6M dollars. The lead investor in this round is a Dutch investment fund Airbridge Equity Partners, which is accompanied by former investors Novira Capital and Reflex Capital. The funding will be used primarily for developing their product for the use of middle-sized and large companies. The investment will also help Smartlook to strengthen its position in the US market, which is already today, generating almost a third of their overall revenue.

Smartlook: A different approach to customer analytics

In the complicated world of various computer platforms, browsers, operating systems and their updates, it is more and more demanding to execute the customer journey flawlessly. Bugs and errors can, however, significantly impact the income of every company. Traditional analytics tools can’t answer the “why” question behind user design, so finding bugs in an app or on the web was a lengthy process. The flawed design will affect every department – developers, support, marketeers and sales as well. And exactly this was the reason why Petr Janošík founded Smartlook in 2016, back then only as a side product of already existing company Smartsupp. Since then, the spin-off company Smartlook became a globally successful business used by customers all over the world, from the US and Brazil to the UAE. Every month, more than half of billion recordings are analysed.

Startup bankers arranged successful Dutch funding

With the rapid growth and first enterprise customers, the managers in the company quickly realised that a large “Round A” investment could allow Smartlook to become a true leader in the global market. “We didn’t have any experience with such a large investment. Just looking for investors and preparing all the necessary paperwork would take months and we wanted to use our precious time for the development of our product instead,” says Petr Janošík, CEO and founder. In the end, the company hired a startup banking company. The investment company was invaluable in speaking with potential investors but also preparing materials such as pitch deck or business plan.

“I would hire a startup banking company again. Unfortunately, in our country, this way of raising money is almost unknown. But I’m recommending it to start-ups. Similar to when you are selling your house with a real estate agent, having a middle-man makes things easier,” summarises Petr Janošík.

The strenuous process of large investment was won by a Dutch investment fund Airbridge Equity Partners. The overall vision of Airbridge was in alignment with Smartlook, and they could also bring to the table their long experience working with B2B SaaS companies, along with important business contacts in the region. “Smartlook allows its clients to truly understand the behaviour of their customer’s thanks to seamlessly combining user recording and event tracking into one visual analytics solution. There is no other software solution on the market that offers this advanced approach, and we see great potential in its future. We can’t wait to work with Petr, Ondra and their fast-growing team of ambitious, highly educated and data-savvy experts to make Smartlook a prominent global player,” says Rick van Boekel, one of Airbridge Equity partners.

CEO Petr Janošík also holds in high regards their current investors Reflex Capitals: “It changed the way I see investors. The right investment partner can bring you not only money but also experience. Reflex Capitals helped me with the whole process, from choosing the right investment consultants to a final contract. They gave us a lot of time and effort,” says Janošík.

Improved product and offices in the US

The significant part of the whole investment will be put into the development. In the next couple of years, Smartlook will become more and more enterprise-grade complex software for large companies such as Miele or Komercni Banka (the largest banking house in Czech republic). In order for the product work among large teams in the enterprise sector, developers have to implement shared workspace, automatic reporting and invest in security measures to pass penetration tests and security certifications. Smartlook also plans to develop predictive analysis and invest in marketing, customer success and sales. Co-founder and CTO Ondřej Machek helps to manage those changes.

For now, almost one-third of the company’s income is generated by US customers, even though the company didn’t specifically focus on this market. US customers are becoming more and more important, as metrics CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value) or ARPA (Average revenue per account) are dozens of more percent higher for US customers than for European customers. To fully capitalise on the potential of the US market, the company decided to open a branch in the US and create a local team.

“We expect that this investment will, besides boosting our growth, lead to another investment round. This time, in the US. Our goal is to become a market leader in behavioural analytics by providing new innovative and fresh solutions on the global level,” summarises Janošík.

About Smartlook

Smartlook is a global SaaS start-up based in Brno, Czech Republic. The company provides a behavioural analysis of users on the web and mobile apps. Thanks to combining user recordings with analytical tools, Smartlook allows users to precisely track user interactions. This way, it helps to understand customers from their own viewpoint and remove bugs that are sabotaging the whole selling process. In the Czech Republic, Smartlook is used by companies such as Alza, O2, Dámejídlo.cz, Seznam.cz, and Home Credit. On the global level, it belongs to the world’s top 5 analytical tools. Every month, it generates more than half a billion user recordings.

author Petr Vecek

Content Manager

The post $3.6M investment to accelerate expansion and development appeared first on Smartlook Blog.

How our Newborn Quickly Grew into a Serious Analytical Machine

Four years ago, we started Smartlook as a simple free tool. As a humble companion to the all-mighty Google Analytics. We were extremely proud of our newborn baby, though. It could measure things and solve bugs, after all! And more importantly, it allowed your regular marketing Joe to gain more insight into customers without the need of being an analytics expert. On one of the leaflets from that era, you can find the claim:

“Everyone can be an analytic”

Soon after that, our binary baby started to learn new things. How to do automated event tracking. How to create heatmaps. How to export data to other platforms. Suddenly, we started to draw the attention of well-respected companies. UX designers, product managers, sales and marketing people in particular began to be very curious. How could these dedicated experts use Smartlook on an everyday basis? With this kind of audience, Smartlook began to represent a serious project, instead of just a nice-to-have gadget.

We still have our regular marketing Joe who peeks there from time to time only to check some heatmaps and couple of interesting visits. These users were already pretty satisfied with Smartlook as it was. But not those highly specialized experts. No, Sir! They insisted on us growing quickly and providing them with a really deep analysis.
It was no longer about

“Everyone can be an analytic”

But more like

“Serious analytics is not for everyone”

Suddenly, we have to handle enterprise-level companies working in large multinational teams handling enormous amounts of data. Some of them process more than 120 million users which equals up to 300 million sessions! Often, these customers juggle their data from department to department – product management, marketing, sales, development and others. Experts from these departments have very different needs. Also, they save much more data in the system. In the end, we came to the conclusion that we have radically redesigned Smartlook to handle big clients working on high profile projects.

But how can Smartlook handle behemoths of business after only four years of development? After four years, most startups are barely able to stand on their own feet. At that age, very few companies aim that high.

We just had to force our beloved offspring into adulthood. In 2020, it was time to send Smartlook off to boot camp to become a heavy-duty analytical universal machine.
Our developers worked hard to bring Smartlook to the next level in order to be able to handle large teams and big data. It was all worth it. The adult version will contain so many changes that we decided to give it a brand new name – Smartlook NextGen. It is truly the next level in workspace design, functionality and the overall amount of features.

The new version will allow you to read much more data from your project instantly. The NextGen interface was created to give you more insight, more control, while still being easy to use at the same time.

It will also make it possible for big teams to work on the same project in an effective and organised way. Permission system will be able to assign exact roles to every user. That way, it will easily be managed by even very large teams working on one single project without becoming confusing or complicated to use.

The new API will also allow your company to extract data and send them to an analytical tool of your choice. Just take whatever data you need, no need to open our workspace over and over again. If you need to see funnel conversion rate in your analytical tool, then you are just a few seconds away. Or do you wish to see the occurances of the events? Feel free to export all the data you need via the REST calls. You can now prepare all these exports and kick back while your team members are getting the needed data on their dashboard.

To reflect all those changes, we introduced a new pricing system. Our two new paid packages are called Business and Ultimate.

How our mindset has evolved over time:

As of now, the NextGen version has been launched and is fully functional. Feel free to explore. And when you do, please share with us your feedback, so we can continuously make improvements. For the sake of all users.

We will support the old dashboard until January 11 2021, so our users still have enough time to cope.
Remember last time when Steve from marketing changed parameters of that important funnel? Or when you returned from vacation and couldn´t find your data among tons of new contributions from several departments of your company? Well, that’s gone. Every user will have the option to create their own dashboard. Solved.
Alright, let’s cut the chit chat. You read this article because you want to know what exactly is going on.

Time to muscle up – what can you expect from the full version

The fully customizable workspace is now displaying much more data. But just those you actually want to see

Many users have praised our dashboard for being so straightforward. No doubt about that. With such a plain design, however, come also many disadvantages. Did you ever handle a large project containing many parameters? Then you know how much scrolling and clicking was to just compare a couple of funnels with each other or to find your saved analytics in the first place. That’s why we decided to create a brand new workspace, that is easier to organize even for multiple users and it makes it much easier to access all important data:

Let’s have a closer look at the left side:

The vertical panel will help you organize more analytics at once but also see more data without the need to click anywhere. Take those pesky funnels, for instance. Want to have a quick overview of how they are doing? Percentage on the right will show you conversion rate. And the arrow pointing either up or down is a current trend.

What kind of data is always visible in Smartlook NextGen

• Recordings
  All saved segments are now easily accessible.
  Intelligent sorting will suggest filters you use the most.
• Heatmaps
  All heatmaps are now conveniently displayed on the left menu.
• Events
  Events now allow advanced filtering and even sorting.
• Funnels
  Conversion ratio in percentage is immediately visible.
  Trending of conversion ratio is showing an increase / decrease.

Not only can you watch more analytics in one panel, you can also manipulate more data at once. Bulk actions will allow you to delete or rearrange plenty of data at once. That way you can save time for more important things (like finally come to Brno, Czech Republic and try out our famous plumb liquor – slivovitz).

Every member of your team can organize and label their own data

When you are working on bigger projects in Smartlook, your dashboard gonna be soon filled with all kinds of data. Data for returning visitors. Data for your new landing page. Data for the blog. Data from the sales department. Data from the marketing department. Data from the new guy in your company who just started to learn Smartlook. 

Smartlook NextGen is created in order to organize better analytics with your colleagues. Now, you can create folders and independent categories right in the left sidebar. But don’t worry too much about interfering with your colleague’s project. Every user has their own dashboard, so there will never be that ‘Hey, Steve, did you delete that funnel for that shopping cart from last week’ conversation.

On the top of that, there is now an option to divide your team to admins / users.  Admin will see maximum data, while your regular marketing Joe won´t be bothered by too many stats.

Thanks to the new SAML sign-on authentication, there is no more need for your team to remember any separate login credentials. Any user can just easily log in using SSO login credentials or even access Smartlook from your company’s dashboard.

Not getting the analytics you want? Then integrate NextGen in your system with API

With this feature, we gonna make your IT experts happy. API is a computer interface which will allow integration between Smartlook and other computer systems. This way, your company can build your own analytics using our data and vice versa. First, you need to create an API token which will allow you to authorise Smartlook in your system. Then, you can start to build your own analytics the way your company needs it.

Especially handy when you need for instance:

• Access data in your dashboard
• See funnel conversion in your daily report
• Use visitor journey in your presentation

With REST API, you can use our data within your designated analytical tools:

Heatmaps now can take care of themselves, no need to constantly engage

Heatmaps will allow you to spot part of your web or app which is getting the most attention. This can be extremely useful in case people are ignoring some part of your web or app, which is important and you want it to be noticed and clicked-through. But setting up a new heatmap every week or so can be time consuming.

Recurring heatmaps will collect the data automatically dependent on your setting. This will save you time and mental capacity. No need to think about your heatmaps, they will collect data continuously.

The new feature is no brainer. Just press ‚Add new heatmap‘ on the heatmaps tab. Then don´t forget to turn on ‚Recurring heatmap‘ option. Before you confirm your setting, define whatever you want to generate a new heatmap every week or every month. Voilà! Now, Smartlook will generate new, fresh heatmap periodically without you to do anything.

Other than saving your precious time, recurring heatmaps are a great tool how to stash your data for further use. When you have your data for long weeks and months, then you can easily compare your current state with your web’s or app’s history. Especially useful, if you expect some changes in your user experience. Just don’t forget to buy enough data storage.

And if you ever end up stuck with something, the help is just round the…sidebar

When you are starting a feature for the first time, there will be an educational video waiting for you. This way, you can learn the feature even in case you don’t know much about analytics yet.

Still not sure? Now, you can find the question mark icon on the bottom of the left sidebar. This will lead you to our help site featuring educational videos Smartlook School and many useful articles.

Something is still lacking in the new Smartlook? Something sinister has happened? Please, don’t hesitate to talk about it with our customer support team. We appreciate your feedback!

author Petr Vecek

Content Manager

The post Launched! Proudly Introducing Smartlook NextGen appeared first on Smartlook Blog.

For better understanding, the diagram depicts our roadmap split into 4 distinct phases.

A retroactive look at our progress

We started humbly in the Phase 1, beginning of 2016, as a free tool with playful communication. Here, our main target audience were product managers, UX/UI designers, marketers, analysts and business owners from companies of all sizes. Our primary goal was to expand Smartlook’s reach as much as possible. We thought that everyone who uses Google Analytics (GA), or other quantitative analytics tool, needs Smartlook session recording data to get to the visual answers to all their “why” questions.

Our primary focus was on simplicity and low price because we wanted everyone to be able to use Smartlook. Thanks to that we were able to sell Smartlook self-service without any sales & account managers. After 10 months of offering Smartlook completely for free we launched a premium package for only $20 alongside the modified free plan. 

Soon after that, we realized that Smartlook wasn’t for everyone. Only bigger teams with dedicated people for product, marketing, analytics or UX have the time to focus on improving their website or mobile app digital experience. If the team was small they didn’t use Smartlook often, and they only revisited Smartlook once they released new UI or feature to check if everything worked well. Based on that we launched a new feature set with new pricing and that marked the beginning of Phase 2. 

In Phase 2 we added automated event tracking with retroactive data and funnels. These two alone added significant analytical capabilities to Smartlook. Moreover, they helped us to keep our users more engaged with Smartlook and use it more often as the features helped them to collect events data in a brand-new and innovative way. 

For comparison sake, companies who wanted to collect event data before Smartlook they had to do:

1. Prepare a new tracking plan with the analytics folks.
2. Waste expensive engineer’s time to write the tracking script.
3. Wait for the release with the new tracking script.
4. Wait a few days/weeks to collect enough data.
5. And finally pray that everything is well defined & implemented. Otherwise, they’d go back to the beginning again.

Before Smartlook your insights were limited by your dataset. That’s why we developed Smartlook to capture all your users actions automatically. In this way users get a completely new approach to analytics. Coupled with Smartlook’s ability to use the retroactive data, you can save plenty of time so you can make important business or product decisions faster.   

For us it was obvious that with new feature set, our target audience wasn’t longer the same. Since then we understood we have to go upmarket. And to do that, we needed to advance the skills of our existing team – we needed to become a team of specialists. 

Soon after, we also expanded from website analytics market segment to mobile apps and mobile game analytics market. Our new goals were to reduce churn, increase ARPA (Average Revenue per Account) by improving reliability, consistency and with the freshly introduced Power package.  

In just 3 years, we have now become recognized among the 50 best software products in EMEA and we are also proud to:

• Make smarter decisions for over 55 000 active users
• Grow our team to 30 people working full time
• Revenue break-even point
• Be noted as one of the 20 Exciting European SaaS Companies with “Euro Vision”

And that’s where we are now. By the end of this year we’re going to move to the Phase 3. 

What you can expect Smartlook will enable you to do

Reaching revenue break-even point few months ago was groundbreaking for us. No longer simply focusing on survival, we are now able to focus on how to grow and more importantly, building the right solution for all companies which really want to create superior digital experience for their customers on any platform.

Here are some main points from our roadmap which we are looking forward to releasing to deliver even more value to our customers:    

• Deep event tracking analysis: We’re not done with automatic event tracking. Moving forward Smartlook users will be able to collect more detailed data for every event. For example, from which device, browser or country the event was triggered or what was the referral or UTM tag for visitors who triggered that event. These will be collected without additional tracking code. On top of that, our users will be able to use these data points (properties) to further breakdown their tracked events & defined funnels. And of course, you will be able to see the recordings from these specific breakdowns.
• Analyzing user retention: It means you will have full view on behavior of your users. Our current events analysis can tell you how many users interact with your product or with a feature in specific day. But, currently they don’t show you how many of them use a feature in one week or throughout the month. Thanks to user retention you will be able to understand which users are the most important for you.
• Use Power features in every package: Starter packages won’t be Starter package any more. We will offer plenty of events and funnels in every package. We aim to remove all the barriers in using Smartlook for event tracking. Our goal is to show our users the value of unique combination of events tracking and session recording that Smartlook delivers. 
• Predictive Analytics with clustering and machine learning models: as the first and second phase of Smartlook growth were about the automatic data tracking, third and fourth phase will be about automatic insights and predictive analytics with an AI implementation.

 Additional important things we want to focus on:

• We want to heavily invest into our team of specialist that will help set up our users for long term success
• Enhancing Smartlook’s reliability with a significant focus on security
• Enabling raw data exports; to files or directly to other tools via API
• Creating advanced integrations with tools you already use

To give you a little taste of the future here is how the new Smartlook will look like:

Getting ready for the future

We’re proud of the story behind Smartlook. Starting as a simple website session recording tool and now competing with main analytics players on the market is an amazing feat. 

Thanks to our customers reviews we rank #2 digital analytics tool on G2 Crowd with an average user score of 4.7 out of 5 and that creates a huge impact on our motivation and commitment to deliver solution for analyzing user behavior in ways never possible before. And even though we are going upmarket, and we are already dealing with enterprises, we want to keep our culture and values as we set them in the beginning. Open mindedness, transparency and directness are our key values not only for communication with our customers but are also shared in our team.

Here I would like to thank all our users for inspiration and support which undoubtedly allowed us to get where we are now. I’d also love to thank all the Smartlook team members for joining in a fun and enthusiastic family that brought about this Smartlook story. I’m excited for the future of Smartlook and I’m looking forward to the adventure of fulfilling our vision.

author Petr Janošík

Founder and CEO

The post Smartlook’s product vision – where are we now, how we got here & where are we going with Smartlook appeared first on Smartlook Blog.

This is our Product Hunt Launch Day Saga. We soared to 5th Product of the Day* and stayed there for hours (until like midnight our time, when “New Google Chrome” swooped in, and, predictably, shoved all other products down — we’re not bitter).

Let’s find out what we did right.

^{(*Technically, by upvotes, we were 4th. Again — not bitter.)}

What should you hunt?

A few years ago, someone outside the company hunted Smartlook. This was before my time, so I don’t know the details, but it’s very unlikely anyone at Smartlook knew about this.

Someone had said, “Hey, Smartlook’s awesome. Let me tell the world about it!”

First off, thanks. And second, we could have helped!

We decided that we needed to maximize the value of this next launch.

But rather than launch Smartlook again, we narrowed the focus. Which is why we decided to go with our recently-launched mobile app features — they were new, unique, and direct, and people would be curious about Smartlook generally. Win all around.

Who should hunt it?

The two schools of thought: to Hunt Yourself or Be Hunted.

I went with the latter for a few reasons:

1. Not too many people knew the name “Smartlook”;
2. Our people weren’t active on PH, meaning they wouldn’t have a lot of clout; and
3. Finding a hunter would be a better way to spread the word about Smartlook.

To find our perfect hunter, I parsed through those who had hunted, upvoted, or followed those first two PH forays. I checked how active they were on both Product Hunt and Twitter, and I wanted to make sure they had a lot of PH followers (since their followers get notified about hunted products).

I found the perfect balance of a hunter, and I reached out to her. She wanted to hear more, and the rest is history.

There were a few backup hunters, in case the first one didn’t pan out. We got lucky.

What do you need to prepare?

A week before a launch date was set, I drafted some emails to send to our user base with a heads up that we’d be on Product Hunt in the coming days (GDPR-friendly and all that). Playing within PH’s rules, we just wanted to keep the launch on everyone’s radar.

We also drafted an email to send on the day of launch (roughly around 1 PM GMT), linking directly to our PH page and, again, asking for feedback. This ended up being the coolest thing for us, because within the hour or two following this email, our numbers started rocketing upwards, and our comments and reviews sections started filling up. The atmosphere in the office was really thrilling.

As for collaterals, I heavily relied on Preview Hunt. This PH launch page generator shows you what everything will look like (approximately) on your own page. I played around with various texts and graphics to ensure the easiest understanding of what this product does. (KISS — don’t expect people to understand your nuanced features.)

I also created social media graphics and texts, which were more fun than necessary, in our experience. Watching the upvotes climb and sharing our successes with Twitter was a rush, but our following on Twitter isn’t sizeable enough for it to have really mattered.

Another thing we did was infiltrate a bunch of LinkedIn and Facebook Groups, as well as some Slack User Groups and Reddit. The first two were easy enough, but make sure you start joining these groups at least two weeks before your launch — the lag between joining and getting accepted varies. Then, we posted slight variations on messages, depending on the group, asking for feedback on our PH page.

Slack User Groups were cool to check out, but you really need to find active ones, and not ones that have upwards of 20K members. At that point, you’re screaming into the void. Reddit, as anyone in social marketing knows, is hellishly dangerous to play with. With the help of one “good karma” account, we managed to post in a few relevant subreddits, but there was next to no traction from them, and two of our posts actually got us punched in the gut. Redditors are serious. Beware.

Lastly, we scraped around for lists of influencers on Twitter, as well as people who’d be interested in us (think keywords like SaaS, startups, UX), and I attempted to reach out to those people on the day of launch with our PH link, asking them to check us out. With a bit more forethought, this might have helped us a lot. Note to self: Spend more time on this next time.

Oh — and we launched around 8 AM GMT.

Any last words?

I’m a content writer, not a campaign manager. My job can be stressful, but I certainly don’t envy the stress that comes with planning and launching a new campaign. Do I have everything? Is it consistent? Will it all work?

That being said, this launch was a cool experience. Sitting around all day, refreshing the page like a lunatic, feeling a surge of adrenaline every time the numbers would increase — it’s not often a marketing campaign can make you feel so energized.

In our experience, this isn’t something that requires tons of prep, but the earlier you start thinking about it, the better. At least, the earlier you start thinking about where and how to promote your PH page, the better.

Look. We got on the featured list pretty early, and we were 5th Product of the Day for a long, long time. 4th, if you’re not using PH’s vague algorithm and just going by upvotes. A lot of interesting leads came in, and we got a steep rise in traffic and interest. It was worth it.

But a word of advice: Don’t get too attached, because Google can swoop in and steal your thunder at midnight.

author Amy Strada

Content and Copywriting

The post How We Clinched 5th Place on Product Hunt (Until We Lost It) appeared first on Smartlook Blog.

A few months ago, we made the bold decision to become sponsors of SaaStr Europa, the second-biggest SaaS (software as a service) conference in Europe (after SaaStock). SaaStr Europa is a two-day event in Paris, and it took place last week with over 1,000 attendees and focused exclusively on SaaS. Though this was the first year of SaaStr Europa, the organizers have a known track record for organizing the biggest SaaS conference in the world, SaaStr Annual, which is held in the Bay Area in the US. They also write a famous blog about SaaS that we read ourselves and can recommend to anyone building their own SaaS project.

By becoming a sponsor, we got a booth at SaaStr Europa, where our team introduced a new version of Smartlook with event tracking and funnels, along with the Beta of our SDKs for native mobile app analytics. Lots of cool new things. And as this was our first sponsorship of a major European conference, we decided to sum up our key takeaways and tips for other startups that decide to visit or sponsor a major conference in Europe.

Is it a good investment to sponsor a conference or buy a booth?

A few years ago, we would have probably said no. But as we grow, we start to recognize the added value of having a booth at an event or conference in our industry vertical. The added value could be split into four segments:

• Keeping a pulse on your particular market — in our case, which products companies are using for website and mobile analytics, and how
• Branding — getting our name and ideas and voice out there
• Acquiring new customers — SaaS is one of our biggest customer groups
• Meeting existing customers — building relationships is key

So the answer is: It depends. If your main goal is branding, then it’s definitely useful to sponsor an event in your industry. If your goal is to do direct sales, then it’s best to buy a booth at one or two events and evaluate whether that style of customer acquisition works for you.

Tech events, especially SaaS ones, are also a good starting point for fundraising. There are a lot of VC investors on the spot, including principals and partners (decision makers in the fund) that you can approach. Though catching their interest among hundreds of other startups is not easy, it’s way more effective than cold emailing.

How do you get the most out of your booth?

Three things. First, increase the visibility of your booth by any means necessary. Rent an LCD display (sometimes it’s offered as an upgrade). Inquire if the organizer provides you with branded materials (table, tablecloth, turnkey booth, etc.). Are they black and white or color? Upgrade to color print if it’s not included by default. Bring two roll-ups instead of one. Have a contest. Showcase a success story of a customer using your product. If the customer is present at the event, even better.

Pick the right booth spot — one close to the flow of attendees. Choosing a booth is usually on a first-come, first-served basis, so be sure to respond quickly to emails from the event organizer. Ask when the booth selection starts, if unclear. We got a spot next to the main corridor where people were coming in and out of presentation halls. Thanks to this, we got way more traffic than other booths.

Differentiate yourself! We brought our own homemade Slivovica, a regional alcoholic beverage, and offered shots in the late afternoon, which brought us a lot of attention and sparked a blaze of networking at our booth. Thanks to our good spot and Slivovica, I think we might have been the most visited booth at the conference (with the cheapest sponsorship package).

Second, preparation is key. Prepare a demo of your product. It says a lot. Practice your product pitch with your entire team ahead of the conference. Highlight the key features that differentiate you from your major competitors (and for each major competitor separately). What we found is that the majority of attendees knew our competitors, so it’s super useful to prepare specific pitches or know the differentiators to each major product in your market.

Most conferences today have an app where you can directly message all attendees. Set up meetings with companies that might like your product ahead of time on the app. Once the person sets up a meeting with you, they are willing to pay much more attention and time to talk to you. Engage in networking to get new insights and meet people who are doing the same.

And lastly, bring your founders or senior people from your team. A lot of large companies don’t do this; they just send sales and marketing people because they do hundreds of events a year. In general, people are much more interested in speaking with a founder or product person than with marketing or sales guys.

That’s it! If you wanna know more about our SaaStr experience, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at vladimir@smartlook.com

author Vladimír Šandera

Cofounder, optimist

The post What We Learned by Sponsoring the Second Largest SaaS Event in Europe appeared first on Smartlook Blog.

As Smartlook is located in the EU, we are taking steps to comply with the GDPR. All of our data is stored on servers in the EU. GDPR’s main purpose is to standardize personal data processing and privacy protection across EU member states, but many of the points GDPR raises are actually already in place in some EU countries. And Smartlook already offers tools to enhance the protection of customer data, as covered in our help section: Data security & legal info

If you have any questions about GDPR itself, you can find out detailed info here. It’s especially useful to read through the FAQ and see what constitutes personal data under GDPR. There are many other topics covered, as well.

What Is Smartlook Doing to Prepare for GDPR?

We are already consulting with GDPR lawyers, and we’ve taken the first steps to become GDPR compliant. Here’s a list of things we are working on, all of which will be done before GDPR comes into effect:

• An internal audit of how we handle the personal data of our customers and their customers — the audit will cover in detail what kind of personal data we process, where that data is stored, and what employees have access to it
• An update of our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions
• A new interface to enable you (our customer) to list all the personal data we store about your customer XYZ (for example), in case customer XYZ will ask you to tell them what personal data you have stored about them — you will also be able to delete this data in case customer XYZ asks you to
• Further necessary adjustments to Smartlook so it fully complies with GDPR

Does GDPR Apply to My Use of Smartlook?

GDPR affects all businesses and entities in EU that process or store personal data. So the answer to that question depends on whether you use Smartlook to collect personal data of your visitors or customers.

Your use of Smartlook only falls under GDPR if you track personal data using Smartlook. To be more specific, GDPR applies to you if you can answer “yes” to at least one of the following points:

• You record forms in which your customers fill in personal data, like their name or email address
• You do NOT anonymize the IP addresses of visitors
• You use our visitor info API or integrations
• You display personal data of users somewhere on your website or inside your product, and this personal data is then captured by Smartlook

Even if you answer yes to all points above, you can still use Smartlook collect personal data while taking steps to comply with the GDPR. If you do collect the personal data of your customers with Smartlook, you need to make sure you take the steps described below.

What Steps Do I Need to Take as a Smartlook Customer?

The first thing you should do is notify your customers and visitors that their personal data might be processed by third parties, including Smartlook. You can find the text we recommend you add to your privacy policy in our help section.

GDPR sets a new legal structure for personal data governance. From a legal point of view, you are a Data Controller of any and all personal data of your customers or visitors, and Smartlook is a Data Processor of that data on your behalf. This means that you collect your customers’ personal data and are responsible for it. By using Smartlook, you pass that personal data to us for processing, but you are still the “controller” of that data. You should update your Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions to reflect this. You can find more info on Data Controllers and Data Processors here.

When GDPR comes into effect, you will be obligated to show your customers what kind of personal data you collect about them if they ask. As mentioned above, we are preparing an interface where you will be able to pull the data we collect about each individual customer of yours, and you will be able to delete this data in case your customer requests it.

We recommend you consult GDPR with a lawyer in your country to make sure you are compliant. For any legal questions regarding GDPR in connection to Smartlook, or if you believe some information in this article is incomplete or incorrect, you can contact me at privacy@smartsupp.com

author Vladimír Šandera

Cofounder, optimist

The post GDPR – Basic info appeared first on Smartlook Blog.

Last week, an article came out from Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy analyzing several user replay solutions, including Smartlook. That jumpstarted a stream of articles on other media sites, including The Next Web, the BBC, and Motherboard. The articles talk about data privacy and present session replay solutions in a somewhat negative light. Some of the articles have a bit of a doomsday feeling to them, labeling visitor recording products as keyloggers, which is technically incorrect. Because of this, we wanted to explain what Smartlook does to protect user privacy and share with you a few security updates.

First off, we developed Smartlook so companies around the world could improve customer experience. UX and UI designers look at session replays to see how visitors interact with a new feature. Customer care reps check user recordings to pinpoint and verify an issue reported by a customer. (We’re pretty sure the other products listed in the research have similar goals.)

The personal data of users might be recorded in the process, so of course it’s important to make sure everything is secure. At Smartlook, we take user privacy seriously and constantly improve our security measures. It’s important to clarify that Smartlook (or any session replay product) tracks only what’s happening on a website on which a company willingly installed our script.

Smartlook doesn’t “record every keystroke”, as many articles were happy to put in their headlines. Our user replay visually captures what is on the page. If you randomly start typing letters on your keyboard, nothing gets captured unless those letters are visually shown on the website in question. So it’s important to treat the information in most media articles with caution. It’s actually better to read the original article from CITP.

One of the main points the Princeton article talks about is that our Smartlook Player doesn’t run on HTTPS. (It’s good to note we are talking only about the Player itself, not the data retrieval, which was already secured. Our website, dashboard, and internal recorder component have already been using an SSL for a long time.) Updating the Player is something we had planned to do in our new product version in Q1 2018, but because of the media coverage, we have sped up the release and are happy to say that the Smartlook Player switch to HTTPS was done yesterday. So now, all Smartlook components are updated. At the same time, we improved the masking of password fields to make sure the password length is not recognizable anymore.

It’s also good to say that Smartlook gives companies lots of tools to further protect the privacy of their visitors, including the masking of form inputs, anonymizing IP addresses, an opt-out for individual visitors that don’t wish to be recorded, or an API to do advanced custom masking of specific elements on websites. All of these options have been available in Smartlook for some time and are described in detail in our Help section. As we are located in the EU, Smartlook will take steps to comply with GDPR requirements, which come into effect in May 2018. We’ll be putting out more info about our GDPR compliance in the upcoming weeks.

Many articles were critical of the fact that companies don’t properly notify their visitors about being recorded. We agree that this should be done, and we cover this in our Help section. We’ve also been informing customers about this from the start. From a legal point of view, session replay is no different from any third-party web script that might track personal data.

It’s definitely good that CITP published their research. It makes sure everyone in our industry is aware of their shortcomings and keeps improving. Transparency is important to us at Smartlook as we keep on hustlin’ and delivering a secure product that our customers can trust. To be honest, our team was actually excited to see Smartlook included in the research as one of major session replay solutions out there.

At the end of the day, we strongly believe that user replay technology is a good thing that helps in a big way. Companies can create better websites thanks to us, which results in better user experience, more simple online shopping, and better software.

Feel free to reach out to us about any further questions in the comments or via email at info@smartlook.com.

author Vladimír Šandera

Cofounder, optimist

The post How Does Smartlook Protect User Privacy? appeared first on Smartlook Blog.