General Questionsaka Answers for EverybodyQ: Ok, I read through your site, can you explain it one more time in simple words?
A: Simplest way to explain what we provide is
"Customers who <insert your verb here> also <insert same verb again>...".
You probably seen examples of such recommendations on the web.
Good examples are:
Q: Which "verbs" (see above) do you support right now in self-service portal?
A: Right now our self service portal provides configuration for
"Customers who visited this page also visited following pages...".
However we have solutions ready for many other "verbs" which may need manual account setup.
Q: Can I see the example?
A: Yes, you can see BrightCove integration example
or see sample recommendations of what else you may be interested to read on our site:
Q: "Visited page" is very close verb to what I need, however I have a better verb which describes my needs closer.
A: That's a great sign that our technology would fit your needs out of the box or we can easy tweak it to provide exactly what you need.
Don't hesitate to contact us at sales@sproose.com and we will gladly help you.
Q: I have a completely different verb in mind, can you still help?
A: Sure, don't hesitate to drop us a word
at sales@sproose.com and we will promptly review your
needs and provide you with comprehensive solution for your needs if we can meet them.
Q: I have 2 "verbs" at the same time in mind, can I get both?
A: It should be easy to mix & match, as well as use different "verbs" on
different sections of your site. Just let us know about your needs at sales@sproose.com
Q: What if sent my email inquiry to wrong department?
A: Don't worry, we know how to forward emails internally, so as long as you sent it to any valid email at sproose.com the right team will eventually get it and will get back to you promptly.
Or alternatively, you can simply email your inquiry to info@sproose.com and we will direct it to proper department.
Q: You mentioned several times about possible customization of your service to meet my needs. Do you charge for this?
A: We are not in the consulting business to charge customers for work which needs to be done on our side. We are in the recommendations business and our goal is to NOT squeeze every penny out of you, but make you happy. So any customization made on our side is free for you (and we will keep it this way).
Q: How do you do it?
A: Using very simple, non-technical terms we measure the behavior patterns of large amount of your users and prepare our recommendations based on that. Don't worry that what users do on your site seems hectic for you from first look, it's our job to digg through them to extract some general patterns and translate them to recommendations for following users. (We hope that this explanation didn't scare you much)
Q: Does acronym SaaS (Software as a Service) correctly explains what you provide?
A: You got it right!
Business Questionsaka "What should I tell my to CEO about you?" or even better "I'm a CEO myself, now tell me..."Q: What benefits can you provide for my web property?
A: You spent a lot of efforts and money to bring users to your site, develop relations with advertisers (or advertising networks) already. Now it's time to better monetize this traffic by keeping users on your web property, letting them to explore more content (visit more pages or watch more videos) generating more ad revenue from it.
Q: Translate it to $$$ (or €€€) please
A: You know the metrics of your web property better than us (or you can easily get it from fellow folks like Google Analytics or Quantcast) so you know how much ad revenue you would yield from each page visit (Don't be confused with all those CPC and CPM ad models, they all still translate back to average $/page view on your site - and don't forget the fact that you show multiple ads on the page). So, by providing you with quality recommendations we simply generate you extra revenue.
Q: Is there any commitment?
A: Don't worry, there is no commitment from your side! There is only one commitment: We commit to provide best possible recommendations for your content and drive you more revenue.
Q: My revenue model is not advertisement-based, can we still work together?
A: Yes, don't hesitate to contact us at sales@sproose.com and we will find a way to cooperate on your needs - you will still probably be benefited from additional user traffic or buying more items by your customer or ...
Q: Will you serve recommendations of external content on my site?
A: As we already mentioned, we perfectly understand that you spent a good chunk of money to get these customers on your site and we perfectly understand that you would be not interested to drive them away of your property. So within your site we will recommend content from your site only - so you will monetize few extra page views of this customer!
Q: How are you different from Quantcast or Google Analytics?
A: About the same way as apples are different from oranges. To better understand differences lets consider core business goals of each service:
Technical Questionsaka "What should I tell to my CTO?" or again, even better "I'm a CTO myself, now tell me..."Q: Now tell me using technical terms what do you do?
A: We take raw data feed on behavior of your consumers (preferably directly from browser using our tracking javascript) then process it on our cloud-based servers and serve another data feed of recommendations (again preferably directly to consumer browser using or recommendation javascript).
To better visualize we prepared overview diagram of our technology.
Q: How does it work for video? Should I embed JavaScripts in my video player?
A: Of course there is no need to embed javascripts for video recommendations. We have custom Flash (ActionScript 3 based) modules which take behavior data and feeds to our servers and gets recommendations back. You can access small
demo here.
Q: Will your JavaScripts conflict with
A: While designing JavaScript to be embedded on somebody else's site our primary goal was non-intrusiveness, e.g. to do not conflict with any possible JavaScript libraries used by web site. To achieve this our JavaScripts:
Q: What do your scripts do?
A: First scripts track user behavior (page visits, clicks on links et cetera), second script requests recommendations for current content from our servers and renders them in dedicated area.
Q: Where should I place scripts?
A: Tracking script should be placed at the very bottom of HTML page (before closing </body> tag) to do not slow down page load; recommendation script should be placed where you want your recommendations to appear.
Q: Should I put scripts on every page?
A: Yes, if you want the page to be recommended or have recommendations on this page you need to place at least tracking script (or both). You probably know that it's not much work - you can just put these scripts into your page template (if you use Content Management System to manage content on your site please check with documentation on your CMS how to use templates).
Q: Should I put tracking script on home page too?
A: Probably not. You (or your marketing department) have already selected areas of your web site where you want to drive traffic. So our recommendations become redundant. Usually humans can prepare better recommendations, however, it may become very expensive (and close to impossible) to manually prepare recommendations for every page on your site. And don't forget that most of your customers go through home page anyway, so those visits would be counted for recommendation purposes.
Q: I put your scripts into the page templates and it's a problem for me to exclude your scripts from home page.
A: Don't worry, just contact us at support@sproose.com and we will filter out unneeded results (noise) generated by home page visits (or upon your request we can blacklist any section of your site from recommendations). Ability to configure this functionality in self-service portal is coming soon.
Q: I feel uncomfortable in putting your scripts into my page...
A: Yes, we understand your concern. However, doing any harm to your pages is not in our interests. Moreover, there is legally-binding contract between us which prohibits rendering any unauthorized content by us on your pages (including pop-ups, links to external sites et cetera).
Q: Can we do purely server-side integration?
A: Yes, we can, but it sounds as little bit more work for you (as we have some strict requirements on data feed we receive) and we will need to run it through sales@sproose.com (don't worry, there is no implementation/consulting fee involved in this process).
Q: Can I review your JavaScripts?
A: Yes, sure. We don't hide them. You can find links to them on your account settings page. For example, this script tracks users on www.sproose.com web site (your would look similar).
Q: Can I test quality of recommendations on my testing/staging site?
A: We definitely encourage you to go through your regular release steps to make sure that everything works same way how it's supposed to work and nothing is broken. However recommendations would be prepared based on behavior of users of your testing/staging site (usually your QA folks who are not real users) and probably would be useful for them and not to your customers. Moreover, we understand that you want to see quality of recommendations yourself before putting them in front of users. To solve this problem we offer 2 separate scripts (instead of single monolithic) - one does just tracking (without rendering any visual element on your page) and another shows recommendations. So our suggested implementation steps are the following:
Q: Can I test quality of recommendations using traffic simulator?
A: Well, it depends on the traffic simulator you use. You need to do full end-to-end simulation including execution of all javascripts served to browser and keeping separate cookies for different users. If you just use plain HTTP traffic simulator (aka load-testers of servers) our JavaScripts would not execute, therefore would not collect any data from such test.
Q: How long does it take to get meaningful recommendations on my content?
A: It depends on amount of visitors of your site. If your property receives millions (or close) daily unique visitors very meaningful recommendations will be ready within few hours. If you have less, don't be scared, it will still work, though it will take longer to get there.
Q: Should I store recommendations in my database?
A: No, we will serve them directly. Moreover, they are dynamic, so they can change anytime. In addition, we are experimenting with further personalizing recommendations for each individual visitor.
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