Visual Website Optimizer: Bootstrapped, Profitable, and over 4,000 users | Hacker News Reader

Visual Website Optimizer: Bootstrapped, Profitable, and over 4,000 users

thestartupfoundry.com

50 pointsg0atbutt18 comments

Congratulations on your success Paras! It's really inspirational. You entered a competitive niche where most customers don't even know they need your product, took on huge players like Omniture and Google, and gained market share by building a superior product and excellent execution.

I get the sense this is only the beginning of VWO's growth :)

Thanks. Yes, every month I sort of worry if we have reached the the inflexion point (after all, A/B testing is B2B and even by standards of B2B not that large). But thankfully number of users and customers keep growing every month. I, now, think that all the top 100k sites from Alexa could be potential customers, so yes this is just the beginning!

I'm (founder of Visual Website Optimizer) on HN. In case any one has any questions, comments, or suggestions please shoot!

(BTW: the number of users figure is closer to 5000 now!)

Congrats on the growth!

Can you elaborate a bit on the numbers? Specifically revenues, margins etc

I knew this question was coming :)

I can't tell you exact revenues but I can talk a little about margins. Since we are handling about 900 million page views, our major cost is CDN (Amazon CloudFront) and Hosting (with Linode). Haven't been doing a lot of paid marketing so only expense we have is people and infrastructure. Actually tried various forms of paid marketing but none really worked so far.

Sorry if I put you on the spot, my main reason for asking was my curiosity regarding the cost of your CDN :) I figured that must make up the lion's share of your expenses.

Yes, CDN costs a lot more than I had initially expected (but it is still not a large % of total revenue)

@paras: I was surprised when I saw your ad running on Drudge Report. What does it cost to run an ad on a very high traffic site like that, and more importantly, did it covert well?

We are using re-targeting using Adroll (though other providers are also there). If you are on http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/ they drop a cookie and then identify you as you travel on different sites on web. They bid across ad networks to show you the ad of VWO.

It costs approximately $1 per click and is perhaps the best investment you can make. But you have to be careful not to spook your users. Have a cap on how many times a person can see that ad in a day.

It converts OK but is great from branding point of view. People tend to remember VWO because they have been on site before.

I think a lot of us fall into the Adwords or nothing trap. I'd love to see a write-up of the different advertising options available on the web. I've looked around in the past, but too many of the write-ups are geared toward the affiliate marketing crowd.

I've used Visual Website Optimizer for a few weeks now, and I'm loving it. It's no wonder they're doing so well. Software is easy-to-use, for coders and non-coders, and it sheds some light on A/B testing. Personally, I think their product may help make A/B testing more main stream.

Thanks for your kind words!

I talked with several startups about Visual Website Optimizer and I heard this same sentiment repeatedly. Their app is really great to work with. I will be using it on all projects going forward.

I can't say I'm surprised. I mainly use it on blogs, and e-commerce stuff and it has been great!

I know of this company because of the great articles they publish about A/B testing, I guess this proves that when you produce good content it can help drive business! Congratulations, keep up the good work :D

No diss to VWO, but that article just reads like an advert.

Hi retube,

I tried to just present the facts in my article, and then give my take in the closing paragraph. I truly believe it's a great tool so perhaps that's what you're picking up. If you have any suggestions to improve my writing style I would be happy for you to share your thoughts with me.

All the best, Paul

Loving VWO - worth nothing that they're doing a webinar with Conversion Voodoo and GazeHawk this Thursday ->

http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/landing...

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