A1WebStats was born out of awareness that businesses are suffering through websites that aren’t performing effectively enough. Our company founder originally spent many years from 2000 onwards, providing consultancy to businesses that had websites that were underperforming.
Those were the days when there was no Google Adwords, no ‘SEO’, no social media etc. Just websites that needed to be stronger to convert visitors to enquiries.
To put it bluntly, when looking at client websites, our approach was, and still is: “that doesn’t work – do this to fix it”.
From 2004 onwards we started using website statistics analysis tools to identify website visitors patterns in more detail. Those tools used to be fairly rudimentary and we looked around for better solutions that were affordable for all businesses.
But we couldn’t find anything. And so A1WebStats was born.
The original intention for A1WebStats was to be software that allowed businesses to dig into website visitor patterns that should be of interest – to the depth where each individal visitor path could be shown. We wanted it so that any business could identify website weaknesses, fix them, and become stronger.
As part of the development of A1WebStats we included the ability to identify (where possible) the names of companies visiting websites. We had searched Google extensively and found nothing of significance that offered such functionality. So we built it, starting in 2010 and launching in 2011.
Then, over time, we became aware of Lead Forensics, and only because they tried to take our customers (they were invisible in search results for the types of phrases a potential buyer would be using). And this is where it’s worth clearing up a misconception – Lead Forensics haven’t been around longer than anyone else. If you look at http://web.archive.org and search for both A1WebStats and Lead Forensics, you’ll see that the first visibility of a Lead Forensics website was only 5 weeks before A1WebStats.
Simplifying that, we had no idea they existed and they had no idea we existed. The key differences though are that Lead Forensics focus primarily on identification of companies going to a website, whereas A1WebStats, although offering that functionality, focuses on what is more important: using analytics to find ways to make a website stronger, so that companies make contact in the first place (instead of seeing they’ve visited and having to try and reach out to them).
We have always had the view of:
What’s the point of generating traffic to a website that’s not properly able to convert that traffic into good levels of enquiries/sales?
What’s quite odd is that over the years, more providers of ‘companies identification’ software have appeared and although we see the attraction (to businesses who want to gain more business) in knowing which companies visit their website, we still think it’s a head-in-the-sand attitude to be chasing identifiable companies (who didn’t make contact) instead of using analytics to make websites stronger.
So why are there so many ‘companies identification’ providers out there now? We believe that it’s because many businesses still think identification of visiting companies is some sort of silver bullet. It’s not. Identifying a visiting company is only the starting point – you then have to find a way to connect with someone there. Yes, it can work sometimes but surely the better answer is to have a website that’s good enough to make those companies make contact in the first place?!
This industry will change. We can’t expect our competitors to be as forward-thinking as we are. Our history and passion is in ‘website conversions’ – years and years before it became common language when people shifted mindset from SEO etc. to what actually matters: people making contact with businesses, having been impressed by their websites.
We’re happy where we are. While we have many subscribers who use A1WebStats purely to identify companies that go to their websites, we also have many more that use analytics more intelligently, making their businesses stronger by focusing on what truly matters. We call them the ‘winners’ because they understand that their future business prosperity is achieved by investing time and effort now by digging deeper into webiste visitors patterns.
Like most businesses, we do have people who cancel subscriptions, but they tend to be the ones who aren’t prepared to make full use of what the A1WebStats system provides. However, we are consistently pleased that our cancellation rates are low, and we have hundreds of customers that have been with us for years, which means that the system is working for them.
We’re not a big business. We don’t have big egos. Or commission-driven sales.
We ARE a passionate team of website effectiveness and online visibility experts who want nothing more than to help companies grow stronger through a much better understanding of how websites are performing, followed by making changes that will make their websites generate more business.
If you’re not already a customer we’d welcome you to try us out on our free trial and to experience how our culture and our software can make a positive difference to the success you gain from your business website.
Our journey continues – we’d love you to be part of it.