- [Jonathan] You know, in the physical world,
you can see the people. You can feel them.
Online, you are blind.
But it does not mean
that the customer is invisible.
Because they gave a lot of information regarding
their behavior with the touch, the tap.
And our job is to understand this behavior
to provide the best experience for the people.
- [Sarah] Hey, I'm Sarah Franklin and welcome to connections
where we hear from some of the most
innovative leaders in marketing.
All of us want to understand our customers
and that's hard when most of our interactions happen online.
That's why Jonathan Cherki founded Contentsquare
to analyze billions of customer interactions everyday.
And help brands understand how and why
people use their website.
So as you can see, I am here in beautiful Paris
to hear straight from Jonathan himself.
Have you ever done anything like this?
Sitting on a boat, going down the river of Paris
on an interview?
- [Jonathan] First interview
in The River Seine.
First one, Sarah.
- [Sarah] Your family ran a food export business
here in France.
Is that where your entrepreneurial spirit comes from?
- I grew up in a family
where my grandfather run a dry vegetable company.
My father is working with them,
my brother is working with them.
I should have worked with the family business.
And so every weekend, it was a business meeting
but maybe without knowing, I was learning a lot
from this family background.
- [Sarah] Contentsquare started out as a project
when you were in business school.
Where did the idea come from?
- [Jonathan] So I was beginning
in an incubator at a business school in Paris.
And I began in a student project based on trying to
understand the performance of advertising.
If the ad is fantastic
but the website is so bad, people will leave.
- [Sarah] Yeah, because you don't want people
to leave the website.
- [Jonathan] Exactly.
- [Sarah] Simple concept, right?
- [Jonathan] And I try to understand...
- [Sarah] Why are they leaving?
- [Jonathan] Why are they leaving
and what can make them stay?
So to really capture and understand that,
we try to go beyond clicks.
Because the current analytics technology
help you to understand step-by-step,
where you were losing customer.
But they didn't really understand why
someone is leaving.
What happened before the click?
What is the efficiency of content? What you can optimize?
And to do so, that's why we tried to develop a technology
that is really capturing every user interaction.
Every touch swipe, zoom, on mobile,
to really understand what makes them click.
- [Sarah] As marketers, we have tons of analytics.
What makes Contentsquare so special?
- [Jonathan] Today, if you would like to analyze something,
you need the IT team to put piece of code everywhere.
At Contentsquare, no tagging.
We train our machine to recognize every area of the website,
every mouse movement, touch, swipe, zoom,
every 15 millisecond.
So we collect all this data
and after we provide insight and recommendation
about the content, the ergonomic, the UX, the errors.
So for example, you take a content on the website,
70% of the content are never viewed.
- [Sarah] What?
- [Jonathan] And the question is,
when they view this content, will they click on it?
Will they convert? Will they buy?
What is the engagement of the content?
So the way Contentsquare is working, is to provide insight
and recommendation about all the asset of the web and mobile
for to also digital and marketing team.
- [Sarah] And how important is it for marketers
to pay attention to the performance of their content?
- [Jonathan] On 100 people coming on the website,
only three people are buying.
On 100 people coming, physical store, 30 are buying.
So the topic of improving the online experience,
improving the conversion rate,
more and more important.
For a long time, the best way to improve online sales
was acquisition.
Make more people come to the website to add Google-
- [Sarah] Bigger funnel-
- [Jonathan] Exactly.
- [Sarah] ... bigger people.
- [Jonathan] Google with the search
or for example, Salesforce with CRM.
But now the cost of acquisition is high.
So traffic is on mobile and the conversion rate is low.
- [Sarah] And so you said that conversion
for in-person is better than online.
How important is it to create a connection
with your customers and prospects
in that online digital world?
- [Jonathan] You know, in the physical world,
you can see the people, you can feel them.
Online, you are blind.
But it does not mean that the customer is invisible.
Because they gave a lot of information regarding
their behavior with the touch, the tap...
and our job is to understand this behavior
to provide the best experience for the people.
And it means you have to understand everyone,
personalize the experience, without compromising privacy.
Because I believe that privacy is one
of the key pillar of the future digital society.
- [Sarah] And how important is it
that you own your data as a customer,
in building trust for the brand?
- [Jonathan] The question is less and less a question
of ownership of the data, but more about
who you can leverage information
without storing information regarding the user,
providing a good experience and personalized experience.
And the way we think about it is, we don't care who you are.
We don't care where you are coming from.
We care about your behavior.
And based on that, we're analyzing it
to provide insight recommendation
or to help to personalize the experience.
So you do not need to choose between
the privacy or good experience.
- [Sarah] So Contentsquare was founded in an incubator.
What are you doing to help that next generation
of innovators and disruptors?
- [Jonathan] It's important for me to not forget where
I come from, and to give back.
So we created our own incubator to give access
to technology, data...
but most importantly,
to help all this fantastic startup,
to bring more innovation and believe in their brand.
- [Sarah] And so how many companies now
are in this incubator?
- [Jonathan] So we have something like 16 startups.
- [Sarah] Right here, in Paris?
- [Jonathan] In Paris.
Innovation come from everywhere and from everyone.
So it's a very fantastic way to inspire also ourself
on the way to disrupt the market.
- [Sarah] How does the
content experience play out on a global scale?
- [Jonathan] There are a lot of difference from one country
to another. Let me give you some example.
A French person is going to a website,
usually they are looking at three pictures
of a specific product.
- [Sarah] Three pictures?
- [Jonathan] Three pictures, that's all.
In China, it's 20!
So there are a lot of difference from nationalities.
And it means that you have to adapt your experience.
Think global, but act local.
- [Sarah] And what do you think the future is going to be
for digital?
- [Jonathan] Couple of insights...
One, I think the world will be more and more
real-time oriented.
So you really need to capture the emotion of the people
in real time when they are buzzing,
because you don't have a lot of opportunity.
Two, we spoke about privacy.
Very important topic to take into account
in every decision.
There is a third topic that really matters,
digital accessibility.
We saw a lot of improvements in the physical world
but not enough in the digital world.
1 billion people have difficulties to access
to online content...
blind people, old people, people with ,
70% of the content online, are not accessible today.
So I think that accessibility will be a very important topic
for the future of the world.
I love to sing that,
"where there is a will, there is a way."
And our way is to have a strong impact.
- [Sarah] For content marketers,
how do you think they feel when 70%
of the content, you're saying, is not being looked at?
- [Jonathan] But they have to work more, first of all.
And I think more and more, the market is maturing
about the importance of the experience.
You know, we began almost 10 years ago in an incubator.
And today we are something like 1,500 people.
We raised $800 million.
And our job is also to educate
all the marketers of the world to try, really,
to improve the experience to measure the efficiency
of their decision...
to really, I would say, give the power
to everyone to take better decision.
Because, of course, you can make a lot
of improvement on your online experience.
But the best way to improve a company is to give easy data
to everyone that will make a better digital world for all.
- [Sarah] Well, I'll tell you something
that's awesome. Turn around right there. Oh my God.
- [Jonathan] Wow!
Hello Eiffel Tower!
- [Sarah] That is pretty incredible.
- [Jonathan] From Paris, with love!