National study reveals what's the secret sauce to influencing successful consumer behavior online

Hotjar, the leading provider of Product Experience Insights (PX) and data analytics, has released its latest research report, Coming in Hot, to better understand how American consumers feel about navigating the online world. The comprehensive study delves into what factors are most important to consumers when visiting sites, as well as what aspects are most likely to drive them away. The report comes off the heels of Hotjar’s first-ever HOTSAUCE conference, which brought together technology, marketing, and e-commerce leaders to discuss digital experience insights and the impacts of customer-centric design.

In today’s digital age, it has become mission-critical for businesses to ensure that they’re providing the best possible experience to their consumers. The Coming in Hot study revealed that nearly all consumers (99%) believe ensuring a seamless experience across all platforms is crucial to their online interactions.

“The hard truth is that organizations will lose interest if they continue to neglect to understand what users truly want and need,” Hotjar CEO Mohannad Ali said. “With this study, we hope to further businesses' understanding of what consumers want and need out of their time online, and to make these experiences better for everyone involved. Leading with empathy combined with a customer-first approach is the best way to make a tailor-made, online interaction.”

Additional Hotjar findings from the Coming in Hot study include:

First impressions are everything
In a world where consumers' attention is increasingly limited, websites need to have instant appeal. According to the study, brands have an average of three clicks to convince users to stay on their site before they navigate elsewhere. Users also shared that:

• Nearly all (95%) of visitors said they pay attention to the layout and usability of a website
• 71% of customers said that the first impression they get from a company’s website influences their brand loyalty
• The majority (64%) said they decide whether or not a website has the information they need within a few seconds

Speed bumps for sites could mean roadblocks for customers
Navigating websites without considering the user experiences is one of the biggest mistakes organizations can make, especially when they are unaware of critical functional issues turning away visitors. While businesses may chalk up certain aspects of their website to minor problems, these annoyances can quickly drive customers away:

• The top three biggest pet peeves users find tiresome are overlapping elements (82%), auto-playing videos (72%), and the absence of expected elements like clear-to-read text (63%)
• 74% said they typically exit the page when they encounter an unnecessary pop-up on a website
• 92% of users have said that they have left a website because it didn’t load fast enough

Those roadblocks could cost companies customers and sales
The pathway to purchasing may not always be straightforward and without transparency and a clear purchasing process, checking out can create a burden for consumers. With users leaving to find a more accommodating website, organizations will feel the detriment of dropped potential sales with their bottom line. According to the study:

• 93% would rather switch to another website than deal with slow loading times
• 84% said that when looking to make a purchase they would rather switch to a competitor’s website than deal with a difficult-to-navigate website
• 92% would rather switch to another website than navigate through a cluttered layout

Ease and efficiency are vital
More often than not, failing to resonate with target customers reveals a business has neglected to understand what users truly want and need, and even existing customers are happy to leave. Brands need to empathize with their customers' needs in order to build strong brand loyalty. Users agree that:

• If a website doesn’t include straightforward information they won’t continue to pursue business (83%)
• Running into issues on a website makes them trust a brand less, even if they’ve previously had good experiences with it (67%)
• Concise headlines on a website make them more likely to interact with a website (85%)

The full Coming in Hot research study can be found here.

Hotjar understands that the best way to ensure this is not only through product experience analytics but also by understanding and empathizing with the user journey.

Mimecast Limited (Mimecast), an advanced email and collaboration security company, today announced the executive appointment of Janet Prosper to the position of Chief Human Resources Office (CHRO), effective immediately. Prosper had served as interim CHRO since October 2022, and Vice President, Human Resources, since May 2021. Reporting to Peter Bauer, Mimecast Chief Executive Officer, Prosper will collaborate with the executive team to shape the company’s people and organization strategy.

In her capacity as CHRO, Prosper will lead all aspects of human resources, focusing on transformation, organizational design, change management, culture and employee offering, talent management, and leader development. Prosper will also lead Mimecast’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Prosper has nearly three decades of experience leading HR teams in large, global organizations, including CareerBuilder, where she designed and led the people strategy across 12 countries and 750 employees. Prosper also held senior leadership roles with global responsibilities at Ciena and Equifax.

“Janet is a strong and capable business partner who is especially skilled at aligning Mimecast’s people strategy with our company goals to drive business success and growth,” said Bauer. “I’m thrilled to have Janet on the team and know she will be a tremendous asset and enabler of our success.”

“It is an honor to lead Mimecast’s fabulous and talented team of human resources professionals,” said Prosper. “I look forward to continuing our work together and partnering with our business leaders to foster an innovative and inclusive culture where people can do their best work, driven by our Mimecast Way values.”

Mimecast: Work Protected™

Since 2003, Mimecast has stopped bad things from happening to good organizations by enabling them to Work Protected. We empower more than 40,000 customers to help mitigate risk and manage complexities across a threat landscape driven by malicious cyberattacks, human error, and technology fallibility. Our advanced solutions provide the proactive threat detection, brand protection, awareness training, and data retention capabilities that evolving workplaces need today. Mimecast solutions are designed to transform email and collaboration security into the eyes and ears of organizations worldwide.

Emerging Calendar Platform is Addressing Modern Workforce Scheduling and Meetings Challenges

Vimcal, the calendar app of choice for many founders, executives, and investors in the tech sector, today announces a $4.5 million fundraise led by Altos Ventures. This significant investment reflects Vimcal's rapid growth and the growing market need for a cohesive, accurate meeting booking and scheduling platform that keeps pace with today's distributed, globalized workforce.

John Li, Vimcal's CEO and co-founder, reflects on the company's journey and its latest achievement: "This funding round marks a pivotal moment in Vimcal's story. It's in our DNA to solve the scheduling pain point for the busiest individuals who have the most hectic calendars, and this funding will let us expand our services to cater to their teams and even entire company."

As Vimcal embarks on this new chapter of growth, the latest funding is a catalyst for its multiplayer features and enterprise motion. This investment solidifies Vimcal's mission to provide an advanced calendar experience, one that transcends traditional scheduling to become an indispensable, intelligent assistant for the modern professional's diverse and dynamic needs.

Vimcal's growth trajectory is particularly evident in the rapid adoption of its recently-launched second product, Maestro, the first calendar designed specifically for executive assistants.

"We were impressed with the team's ability to rapidly iterate on the product based off customer feedback. We believe there is a huge opportunity in solving everyday scheduling and meeting pains, particularly those of Executive Assistants, who are a vastly underserved demographic," said Dillon Krasnigor of Altos Ventures. "We see tremendous potential in Vimcal's vision and are excited to partner with the team."

"70 percent of EAs manage more than one executive's calendar. Every meeting is high stakes and no mistakes can be made, which makes building software for EA's an incredibly complex challenge," describes Li. "They're the Navy Seals of calendar users. If we can build a calendar for them, we can build a calendar for anybody." This development signifies Vimcal's expanding influence in large enterprise organizations, revolutionizing the management of executive calendars with unprecedented accuracy and effectiveness.

In addition to the rollout of Maestro, the enthusiastic adoption of Vimcal's AI features is duly noteworthy in the company's innovative approach and growth, offering capabilities that extend far beyond traditional calendar capabilities.

Vimcal's AI-driven Free Time Finder scans schedules to suggest the best meeting times, considering factors such as participants' availability and preferred meeting hours. Additionally, the Company Briefs feature enriches data on participants with concise profiles, ensuring users are well-informed and ready for their meetings. These AI functionalities demonstrate Vimcal's commitment to enhancing productivity and streamlining the complex dynamics of modern scheduling.

Echoing the sentiments of Vimcal's growing user base, Joe Gebbia, Co-founder of Airbnb, attests to the platform's utility: "Vimcal wins for a great product. Running my life is easier thanks to their care for detail and obsession with listening to their customers."

With this latest influx of funding, Vimcal is set to redefine the meeting experience in today's modern professional landscape. "I always like to say Vimcal is Meetings company, not a Calendar company." Beyond traditional scheduling, Li says that Vimcal, bolstered by its advanced AI functionalities, the innovative Maestro platform, and innovative features on the roadmap, is evolving into the comprehensive meeting platform. Its design caters to those with the highest demands for productivity and software, positioning Vimcal as an essential platform  for high performers and their teams in today's dynamic work environment.

More Than Half a Million Early Users Utilize Pika to Transform Text and Images into Breathtaking 3D, Anime and Cinematic Videos

Company Also Releases Pika 1.0, New Web-based Product for Consumers

Pika, an AI video platform that is redesigning the video-making and editing experience, announced its Series A funding round of $35 million, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. With this latest round, Pika has raised a total of $55 million in the company’s first six months with Pre-Seed and Seed rounds led by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. Additional investors include other prominent angel investors in AI, including Elad Gil, Adam D’Angelo (Founder and CEO of Quora), Andrej Karpathy, Clem Delangue (Co-Founder and CEO of Hugging Face and Partner at Factorial Capital), Craig Kallman (Chairman and CEO of Atlantic Records) and Alex Chung (Co-Founder of Giphy), as well as venture firms such as Homebrew, Conviction Capital, SV Angel and Ben’s Bites.

Pika also unveiled Pika 1.0, a major product upgrade that includes a new AI model that can generate and edit videos in diverse styles such as 3D animation, anime or cinematic, and a new web experience that made it easier to use. A video highlighting some of the new features of Pika 1.0 can be found here. You can join the waitlist for Pika 1.0 at https://pika.art.

The first version of Pika launched in beta on Discord in late April of 2023 and today has more than 500,000 users generating millions of videos each week. Top Pika users on Discord spend up to 10 hours a day creating videos with Pika. Pika-generated videos have gone viral on social media: on TikTok alone, the #pikalabs hashtag has nearly 30M views.

Video is one of the most widely used creative mediums, dominating social media, entertainment and educational platforms, but it remains complicated and resource-intensive to create. While other AI video tools are primarily focused on professionals and commercial use, Pika has designed a video-making and editing experience that is effortless and accessible to the everyday consumer and creator. Anyone can be a creative director with Pika.

“My Co-Founder and I are creatives at heart. We know firsthand that making high-quality content is difficult and expensive, and we built Pika to give everyone, from home users to film professionals, the tools to bring high-quality video to life,” said Demi Guo, Pika co-founder and CEO. “Our vision is to enable anyone to be the director of their stories and to bring out the creator in all of us.”

The new Pika 1.0 includes the following:

• A new generative AI model that creates even higher quality video.
• New features that allow you to edit videos with AI, in addition to generating videos in many new styles:
  • Text-to-Video and Image-to-Video: Type a few lines of text or upload an image on Pika, and the platform creates short, high-quality video using AI.
  • Video-to-Video: Transform your existing videos into different styles, including different characters and objects, while maintaining the structure of the video. For example, change a video from live action to an animated video.
  • Expand: Expand the canvas or aspect ratio of a video. For example, change a video from a TikTok 9:16 format to a wide screen 16:9 format, and the AI model will predict the content beyond the border of the original video.
  • Change: Edit video content with AI, such as changing someone’s clothing, adding in another character, changing the environment or adding in props.
  • Extend: Extend the length of an existing video clip using AI.
• New web interface: Now, Pika will be available on both Discord and web (mobile and desktop) at https://pika.art.

"Just as other new AI products have done for text and images, professional-quality video creation will also become democratized by generative AI. We believe Pika will lead that transformation," said Michael Mignano, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. "Given such an impressive technical foundation, rooted in an early passion for creativity, the Pika team seems destined to change how we all share our stories visually. At Lightspeed, we couldn’t be more excited to support their mission to allow anyone to bring their creative vision to life through video, and we’re thrilled to be investing alongside other amazing investors at the forefront of AI."

Pika was founded by two experts in AI: Demi Guo, co-founder and CEO, and Chenlin Meng, co-founder and CTO, both former PhD students hailing from Stanford University’s prominent AI Labs. Prior to her time at Stanford, Demi worked as the youngest full-time employee at Meta AI Research as a college sophomore, and won numerous international awards in software development. Chenlin has published more than 28 research papers in the last three years, including Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models (DDIM), which is now a default approach for content generation and has been widely used in OpenAI’s DALLE-2, Google’s Imagen and Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion.

Former F5, Microsoft, Adobe executive brings stellar track record to lead new go-to-market function for the multi-domain global business software company

Freshworks Inc. today announced the appointment of Mika Yamamoto as the company’s Chief Customer and Marketing Officer. She will be responsible for leading the company’s global marketing and customer experience teams. Yamamoto comes to Freshworks from F5 where she most recently served as the Executive Vice President and the Chief Marketing and Customer Engagement Officer, and led the company’s data, marketing, digital transformation, and customer experience efforts across all products, segments, channels, and geographies.

“Mika’s combined CMO and CXO roles have given her a unique perspective that has ultimately led to innovative, measurable changes for employees, customers, and prospects,” said Dennis Woodside, President at Freshworks. “She has a long-standing track record of leading global and diverse customer experience teams and delivering exceptional go-to-market results at large public technology companies with multi-domain businesses serving customers big and small. Her know-how and desire to build and scale a large enduring company makes her a great addition to our Freshworks leadership team.”

Prior to joining F5, Ms. Yamamoto served as Global President of Marketo and then became SVP and General Manager of Marketo at Adobe after it was acquired. Ms. Yamamoto previously served as Chief Digital Marketing Officer and CMO of SMB for SAP. In addition, she has held senior leadership roles at Amazon Books, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Stores, Gartner and Accenture.

“I am excited to join Freshworks to be a part of its journey to become a multi-billion dollar software company and to focus on a segment of companies and people I have a great passion to serve,” said Mika Yamamoto, Chief Customer and Marketing Officer at Freshworks. “My whole career has been spent on transforming go-to-market approaches and customer experiences within global companies to steepen the growth curve. I truly believe that bringing the end-to-end customer experience with marketing and customer success teams together at Freshworks will help accelerate growth while keeping our customers at the heart of all we do.”

Yamamoto holds a B.A. in Commerce, with a focus on Economics and Marketing from Queen’s University in Canada and serves on the boards of BlackLine, the Rainier Valley Food Bank and the United Way of King County. She joined the executive team on November 20 and reports to Freshworks’ CEO and Founder Girish Mathrubootham, and President Dennis Woodside.

Ooma, Inc., a smart communications platform for businesses and consumers, today announced that the Ooma AirDial^® solution for POTS replacement now incorporates Ooma’s MultiPath technology, a unique and patented feature that allows uninterrupted backup for life-safety devices such as fire alarm panels and elevator phones.

MultiPath, available now to all AirDial customers, creates a continuous dual connection between AirDial and the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) by transmitting data packets simultaneously through two links – AirDial’s wireless LTE network and the customer’s existing broadband network.

Technically an active-active topology, MultiPath intelligently monitors the flow of data packets, constantly judging the best link. If one connection is disrupted by congestion, dropped packets or latency, the other connection is automatically and instantly used. If one connection goes offline, calls in progress continue uninterrupted through the other connection.

This is distinctly different from the traditional failover feature of other POTS replacement products, where one link is designated as primary and the other as secondary. Only if the primary link fails does the connection switch to the secondary link. This disconnects any call in progress and requires re-establishing a connection, which can take a full minute or more and can be highly problematic during emergencies.

Ooma AirDial helps businesses and property managers survive the impending “copper sunset” of legacy analog phone lines, also known informally as Plain Old Telephone Service or POTS. Many life-safety and business-critical systems such as fire-alarm panels, elevator phones, building entry systems, burglar alarms and fax machines today rely on POTS connections. Yet, in the wake of the Federal Communications Commission lifting most regulations on carriers, monthly rates for POTS service are soaring and reliability is declining.

Designed from the ground up as a turnkey solution for POTS replacement, Ooma AirDial brings together hardware, software, wireless connectivity and virtual analog phone lines in a single package with a single monthly bill from one vendor. Remote device management through an online portal makes it easy to monitor and control AirDial units across multiple locations and for IT consultants to supervise multiple accounts.

“Every second counts in an emergency and that’s why we’ve added MultiPath technology to Ooma AirDial,” said Thad White, vice president of product management for Ooma. “Our customers have told us they want a POTS replacement solution that is resilient, scalable and affordable. We’re proud to be one of the leaders in the market by offering this unique level of protection.”

The integration helps publishers unify audiences across different devices and ad types

TransUnion today announced an expanded partnership with FreeWheel, a global technology platform for the television advertising industry. The partnership integrates TransUnion’s TruAudience® Data Marketplace with FreeWheel’s Audience Manager.  

The result is a new solution that allows publishers and programmers in the TV ad ecosystem to greatly improve their audience match rates. It does this by leveraging the FreeWheel Identity Network to better pair TransUnion audience segments with FreeWheel’s inventory sources.

“TransUnion has been a great partner to FreeWheel and together we’re excited to fuel enhanced audience unification across device and inventory,” said Matt Clark, VP of Strategic Partnerships, FreeWheel. “This newly combined solution will help unlock new capabilities for publishers, including faster audience activation across screens, resulting in an improved viewer experience.” 

Launched last year with TransUnion as an inaugural launch partner, FreeWheel’s Identity Initiative is an industry offering that enables advertisers to seamlessly connect first- and third-party data to the increasingly wide array of IDs from different platforms and endpoints. The end result is a simpler and more interoperable TV ad ecosystem. 

TruAudience, TransUnion’s line of marketing solutions, meanwhile, transforms marketing and media effectiveness with an end-to-end solution suite integrating identity resolution and enrichment, consumer and media insights, omnichannel targeting, marketing mix modeling, and marketing attribution for brands, agencies, publishers and technology providers. 

“Integrating our TruAudience Data Marketplace into FreeWheel’s Audience Manager puts audience data into the hands of publishers and programmers when and where they need it,” said Dave Oliveira, Senior Vice President of Sales, TransUnion. “As we prepare for the future of TV advertising, our data and the audiences we serve in the Data Marketplace will facilitate better connectivity and enable addressability at increased scale for publishers even as legacy third-party identifiers disappear.” 

Through the TruAudience Data Marketplace, publishers and CTV programmers are able to identify and monetize audiences with rich consumer, behavioral and propensity data sets to reach audiences across ad-supported premium video services and devices. Underpinned by a patented household graph reaching 80 million U.S. streaming homes, publishers will have advanced targeting capabilities that they can use to activate more campaigns with greater accuracy, speed and scale.  

One key feature of the expanded partnership is that publishers can now directly access the TruAudience Data Marketplace through an integration with FreeWheel’s recently launched Audience Manager. With more data at hand, publishers’ and programmers’ match rates improve across their value chain, helping them avoid over-targeting the same households across separate devices and audience definitions. 

As part of its mission to help companies build better digital products and experiences, Amplitude, Inc. today announced that former Tableau executive Francois Ajenstat has joined the company as its new chief product officer. With over 25 years of industry experience, Ajenstat will lead Amplitude’s product management, design, and growth organization globally.

The move comes as Amplitude continues to grow its business by enabling companies to understand how customers use their products. Amplitude's Digital Analytics Platform provides these companies with data they can trust, deeper insights into customer behaviors, and faster actions to improve the digital experience.

“As product, marketing, and digital experience analytics continue to converge into a single category, we have the opportunity to serve all these audiences with our platform,” said Amplitude CEO Spenser Skates. “Francois’ remarkable track record of building and managing products in the data and analytics space makes him the ideal fit for our next phase of growth. He is exceptional at product strategy, understands our space deeply, and puts the customer experience at the heart of every decision. I look forward to working alongside him as we scale and deliver even more value to our customers.”

Prior to joining Amplitude, Ajenstat led Tableau’s product organization for 13 years as it grew from a small startup to a multi-billion dollar public company that was ultimately acquired by Salesforce. Before that, Ajenstat spent a decade at Microsoft driving the business and product strategy for SQL Server and Microsoft Office and helping to define the company’s environmental sustainability strategy.

“Data is critical to the future of digital products and experiences. Companies need clear insights into what people want, where they get stuck, and what keeps them coming back in order to deliver on the promise of those products,” Ajenstat added. “Amplitude’s platform gives teams the tools to make this promise a reality. I’m excited to help our customers build the best products in the world and unlock their digital channels in a way previously not possible.”

As part of today’s news, former Amplitude CPO Justin Bauer has transitioned from the company to take a well-deserved break.

“Justin joined as our first product hire eight years ago when we were $2 million in ARR and has scaled Amplitude to over $250 million as our first CPO,” added Skates. “From delivering a market-leading analytics product, to expanding our platform, to delivering our new self-serve plan, Justin has been instrumental in every stage of our growth. It has been a privilege to work with him.”