Passion for building products triggered ex ClickDesk’s product evangelist to launch engaging tool for website visitors - VisitorEngage
Motivation for starting up and early days of VistorEngage
In his earlier stint Jagan Ganti (founder VisitorEngage) closely worked with the CEO in a product startup (ClickDesk, live chat for businesses) for more than 2 years. At ClickDesk he was responsible for product marketing, channels and growth. Having seen one and read plenty of the startup roller coaster rides, he tends to experience it. “I feel the term 'entrepreneur' overwhelming. For me it's about being the product owner and working - from visualizing the concept and features to marketing to customer happiness’” says Jagan.
When Jagan left his corporate stint to start VisitorEngage he shared his ideas about how much he wanted to be in the product scene with a close friend. Later on the duo have agreed to launch VisitorEngage. “Both of us are well aware of the co-founder conflicts that happen during this phase and spoke upfront about the finances, responsibilities, targets and plans on how we are going to take this forward,” says Jagan.
Major features and pricing
While currently there are plethora of startups operating in 'feedback' space including many other offer survey widget, VisitorEngage brings in a complete set of feedback, surveys and notifications packed into one solution. VisitorEngage offers full customization features in creating these surveys, notifications or just feedback badge. Website owner can set some rules (like time spent on a page, location, browser cookie based etc.) while creating notifications/surveys to target the visitors and when these are matched they get triggered on the website automatically.
JS API is another major feature allowing ecommerce companies to personalize and run dynamic notifications - the API can be used to trigger automated notifications or upsell based on visitor's shipping address, real-time shopping cart value, purchase history of a customer, current plan etc. WebEngage competes with Getsatisfaction, Uservoice along with others.
VisitorEngage has free plan with cap on features while the paid plans start at $20/month and give complete control over customization (including custom css, advanced targeting rules) and no hard limits on the number of times a feedback, survey or notification is displayed or responded to. Besides this it also offers complete whitelabel (sans VisitorEngage branding) solution for $100 a month which includes all features.
Challenges and future plan
“The initial struggle has just started as we are now looking to hire a developer. The ones currently working in MNCs aren't startup ready and fresh graduates are looking for a 'brand' to jumpstart their career,” laments Jagan.
Besides many other minor feature VisitorEngage has strong focus on product roadmap (advanced reports, funnel survey questions, integrations, a/b testing modules). “We want to prioritize the items based on feedback and demand once we are launched. On the marketing front, building channels, content marketing, integrations & partnerships for the product are our top priority,” concludes Jagan.
