Granify Raises $1.5 Million To Help Drive E-Commerce Transactions With Big Data

While more and more people are doing their shopping online, converting them from virtual window shoppers to actual customers can be incredibly hard. Typical e-commerce conversion rates can be surprisingly low, but a startup called Granify believes that it can help increase conversions by using big data to step in just as potential customers are about to drop off and keep them on site, maybe even convince them to make a purchase.

Granify offers a software-as-a-service platform that uses big data and machine learning to identify the points in an e-commerce transaction where users are most likely to convert, and conversely, when they’re ready to walk away from a transaction. By examining bazillions of data points, the company can determine with a fair amount of accuracy when each of those things will occur.

But more than just providing analytics to e-commerce companies, it actually works in real time to keep users shopping. It does this by offering up contextually relevant messages, depending on the situation, which might urge the customer to stick around or actually make a purchase.

The most obvious example is offering up free shipping for someone who already has an item in their cart, when the system determines that they might not actually click “Buy.” But surprisingly, it’s not always about offering financial incentives to those browsing — and let’s be clear, e-commerce companies could lose a lot of money by offering free shipping to folks who were probably gonna buy anyway. Sometimes, it’s as easy as reminding potential buyers that the e-commerce provider has an excellent return policy, or that proceeds from your purchase support a charity.

Granify is currently processing more than 5.3 billion data points a month. And it’s doing that by seamlessly integrating with e-commerce stores, and works on a pay-per-performance basis. So hey, it’s gotta work if Granify expects to get paid.

Anyway, to continue growing, the company recently received $1.5 million in seed funding from a group of investors that includes Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Klass Capital, iNovia Capital, BDC, Extreme Startups, Social Starts, Jared Kopf, Jerry Neumann, Giordano Contestabile, Tom O’Connell, Adam Caplan, Nick Koudas, Nilesh Bansal, Jamie McDonald, and Jonathan James.