When deciding on a present for an anniversary, a friend’s birthday or any other occasion, people often spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect gift. In many cases, despite all good intentions, the present you decided to buy goes unused, or more commonly, gets exchanged.
That’s where Israeli startup Presentip comes in. Presentip is developing a platform for e-commerce sites that enables them to use their users’ social data in order to increase sales by offering them more targeted products.
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The company’s algorithm basically combines between the user’s “dry-fact data” (a “like” on Facebook given to a certain page or product) witch social studies that analyze the user’s behavior and matches them with a product of high purchasing potential. During an initial pilot, launched four weeks ago with Sears, one of the largest retailers in the US, the company implemented a smart gift-shopping system on the ShopYourWay website, which is partnered with Sears. The recommendations generated by the system are based on interests, online activity and friend recommendations.
Targeting the US market
The pilot is currently underway with 500 selected users. Users enter the system and pick a friend for whom they wish to buy a gift (friends whose birthdays are coming up are at the top of the list). The system matches that friend with a gift, by comparing their traits and interests with predetermined personality types, according to which gifts in the determined price range are selected. Next, users can choose to buy one gift or, they could choose several gifts and consult with mutual friends to choose the best one.
The company is primarily targeting the American market, where they say the e-commerce culture is mature and has the largest potential for success. Ariel Kedem, one of the founders of Presentip, told Newsgeek: “the Israeli consumer doesn’t like buying physical objects online; they’d rather touch and feel what they’re buying.” After the US, the company will focus on other markets worldwide. The company’s business model is based on revenue sharing with large online shops, but it’s also targeting smaller retailers, offering their platform for a monthly fee.
“We had a lot of work building the system accurately from the social and behavioral aspect,” Kedem told Newsgeek, “we inspected and studied over 2,000 fans of pages on Facebook over almost six months, and analyzed their behavior with the help of sociology students and created a smart algorithm that can match the user’s interest, behavior and the right gift.”
Kedem adds: “The system’s most prominent benefits are increasing traffic and convergence rate, since the platform basically guides the user towards the gift they’d like to buy. What usually happens on such websites is that there’s a huge selection of products and the users get lost, now there’s a platform that knows how to direct the users, recommending relevant products, thus enhancing the odds of them making a purchase.”
Presentip was founded in September 2011 by Uri Federman and Ariel Kedem. The company operates out of Ramat Gan and employs three workers and additional outside contractors. The company has raised $260,000 to date and is directing its efforts towards investors involved in the world of e-commerce.
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To read this article in Hebrew, click here.
Via Newsgeek
