If you were an online retail channel and could increase your conversions to sales by 350 to 400-percent, with a minimum investment in time and cost would you do it?
iGuiders, a Cleveland startup company with an interactive online shopping and search application, is betting you would. And, so far, iGuiders Founder & CEO, Jodi Marchewitz, has reason to believe.
iGuiders are interactive, decision-making applications that launch a Guided Shopping Experience ™ (GSE) directly from a link embedded into any digital marketing initiative, including social media, ads, websites and e-mails. Given the customer's responses to a series of questions, the application guides the customer to the product or service that best fits their needs -- providing a virtual personal shopper.
Marchewitz says billions are lost in online sales each year simply because people cannot easily find what they're looking for. iGuiders are built specifically for each company, according to a set of questions and answers provided by the client, and are designed to lead the customer directly to purchase.
The company was founded by Marchewitz in 2008, with a grant from Cleveland's Civic Innovation Lab. iGuiders subsequently received two rounds of angel funding from JumpStart Ventures and has already served heavyweight clients such as Mattel, Kodak, Sports Authority, NFL, NHL, NBA, NASCAR and Skull Candy.
Now, iGuiders has signed with Value Click, as its exclusive ad network partner and has presented iGuiders demos to 70 of Value Clicks top clients. "We've given them the runway," Marchewitz says, "and we're excited about the potential Value Clicks brings to our exposure to the market."
The company has also grown from 4 to 6 employees. "Because we created the app so that no coding is required, we are able to hire entry-level staff and bring them up to speed quickly," Marchewitz says. "Our most recent intern was writing iGuiders after one day."
And the growth potential for iGuiders? Let's just say that Marchewitz is optimistic:
"It's really a no-brainer for marketers when we can build the iGuiders in less than a day and increase their conversions immediately."
Source: Jodi Marchewitz, iGuiders
Writer: Dana Griffith