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Visual Website Optimizer: Bootstrapped, Profitable, and over 4,000 users
- il 16y agoCongratulations 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 :)
- paraschopra 16y agoThanks. 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!
- Datasta 16y agoI'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.
- paraschopra 16y agoThanks for your kind words!
- g0atbutt 16y agoI 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.
- Datasta 16y agoI can't say I'm surprised. I mainly use it on blogs, and e-commerce stuff and it has been great!
- paraschopra 16y agoI'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!)
- rumpelstiltskin 16y agoCongrats on the growth! Can you elaborate a bit on the numbers? Specifically revenues, margins etc
- paraschopra 16y agoI 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.
- rumpelstiltskin 16y agoSorry 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.
- paraschopra 16y agoYes, CDN costs a lot more than I had initially expected (but it is still not a large % of total revenue)
- nhebb 16y ago@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?
- citricsquid 16y agoI 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
- aresant 16y agoLoving VWO - worth nothing that they're doing a webinar with Conversion Voodoo and GazeHawk this Thursday -> http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/landing-pages-free/ http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/landing...
- retube 16y agoNo diss to VWO, but that article just reads like an advert.
- g0atbutt 16y agoHi 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