Brow.si gives publishers a powerful tool to improve user experience and monetisation on content on mobile sites. Their biggest challenge with analytics is accurately understanding usage patterns across a myriad of mobile devices and OS versions. Brow.si have been using GoSquared almost since they launched back in 2012 and we sat down with Gal Brill, CEO and co-founder, to talk about why they need accurate real-time analytics.
What does Brow.si do?
Brow.si is for the mobile web. We help web publishers and website owners improve engagement and monetisation.
Why did you start Brow.si?
We wanted to bring parts of the easy to use and intuitive UI functionality you get in native apps to the mobile web. When the user touches our floating menu, you’ll see a couple of tools the user needs to navigate. The point of Brow.si is to give the end user a very slick, floating menu on mobile and give the publisher increased engagement, retention and new revenue opportunities.
What is unique about Brow.si’s tools for mobile web publishers?
A big challenge is supporting all Android versions from 2.1 onwards and iOS 5, 6 and 7. For example, maintaining functionality and SDKs for sharing across all these versions and devices is a big task. We created our own framework to do this that works across any of these devices and accounts for everything from platform to screen size, resolution or device orientation in order to place the menu correctly.
One of our greatest advantages is our very superior sharing tool. It doesn’t matter where you are in an article, we let you share it straight away. Sharing is always right in front of you —you don’t have to play around with scrolling up or down the page to find the right buttons. And you can share to multiple social networks in one click.
Everybody is struggling with the mobile web and working out how to get more engagement, better monetisation and revenue streams.
Another user experience advantage is when changing articles, the user isn’t flipped out of the page. This is a big friction point for users and publishers lose readers every time.
Publishers are seeing a real difference in terms of time on page and engagement that our solution offers. We also provide simple search capability for sites and this opens up more monetisation opportunities for publishers with paid search.
We also have Mini Apps. These tools add a floating layer with, for example, content discovery by the publisher, an RSS feed or recommendations from Taboola. Secondly, we can add rich media on top of the floating layer. As part of our IP, we know how to float different aspects to bring rich media to mobile.
What do your customers love about Brow.si?
The expanded opportunities for mobile and monetisation. Everybody is struggling with the mobile web and working out how to get more engagement, better monetisation and revenue streams. All in all the experience we introduced, the way that our platform can be utilised and the increased revenue potential are the three things that the publisher likes. And it’s not intrusive, there’s no Brow.si branding — the user isn’t seeing any third party.
How did you first discover GoSquared?
It was my lead frontend developer Oz who introduced the team to GoSquared. He’s a designer at heart and our first experience with GoSquared was seeing the globe feature and we really liked it. We had a look at how the technology worked and shortly after launching our first beta, we incorporated GoSquared tracking into our code.
So each event is marked in real time and this is where I like to think of your slogan ‘Act now. Not tomorrow’.
What are the most important features for Brow.si?
The first major part of GoSquared for us is the events feature. When we deploy a new version, we mark it on the timeline as an event. So each event is marked in real time and this is where I like to think of your slogan ‘Act now. Not tomorrow’. I explain to the team it’s not tomorrow, it’s not later, we need to know now how that deploy affects our users.
If I see a change in behaviour or usage then I go and find out what the problem is.
In the early days, we had lots of mistakes and problems. When deploying, we instantly see the impact on global usage with GoSquared. I have GoSquared running live in my office. If I see a change in behaviour or usage then I go and find out what the problem is.
GoSquared is a real time monitoring tool at the heart of Brow.si. We see problems straightaway and we can see increases or decreases of total usage in real time. And I can dive in to see what caused a surge in usage —is it a particular article taking off etc.
For Brow.si, GoSquared is a very elaborate real-time monitoring tool.
Everyone gets value from it.
Who in the team has access to GoSquared?
Everyone can see the information from GoSquared. I have the dashboard on a big screen in the CEO’s office and tech and sales also have dashboards up. We have a screen up in the front lobby showing the globe with all our users.
Everyone gets value from it. For example, sales use it to see when new clients are trying out the tool and to monitor the impact of our business development efforts. The framework is an open tool, so we have customers check us out first —we see that on GoSquared— and then we can follow up and engage them in a conversation.
We love GoSquared and have been using it as much as we can.
Gal Brill is CEO and co-founder of Brow.si.
About Brow.si
- Brow.si helps publishers increase engagement and monetisation on mobile sites.
- By providing a vastly superior user experience for reading and sharing content on mobile browsers, Brow.si are delighting publishers and end users alike.
- Brow.si needs to accurately monitor usage across the thousands of sites and publishers using their technology.
- Brow.si are headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Interesting in learning about strategies for monitoring high volume sites? Explore why analytics from GoSquared are simply more accurate than other tools.
