FullStory Raises $103M to Tackle Website Rage Clicks

The Ongoing Challenge of Digital User Experience

Despite significant advancements in screen-based interface design, users frequently encounter frustrating experiences online. Common issues include difficulty locating desired information, irrelevant content overload, and technical glitches that disrupt the user flow.

FullStory Secures $103 Million in Series D Funding

FullStory, a company dedicated to identifying and resolving these digital experience issues, has announced a substantial funding round. The platform focuses on pinpointing usability problems and offering solutions to publishers, even trademarking the term “Rage Clicks” to emphasize its commitment.

Investment Details

The Atlanta-based company has successfully closed a $103 million Series D round, which was oversubscribed and continued to grow even during the interview process. Permira’s growth fund is leading the investment, with participation from existing investors including Kleiner Perkins, GV, Stripes, Dell Technologies Capital, Salesforce Ventures, and Glynn Capital.

To date, FullStory has raised approximately $170 million, and this investment values the company at $1.8 billion.

Growth and Customer Base

According to Scott Voigt, FullStory’s founder and CEO, the company currently serves 3,100 paying customers across diverse sectors like retail, SaaS, finance, and travel. Notable clients include Peloton, the Financial Times, VMware, and JetBlue.

These customers are projected to generate over 15 billion user sessions this year, encompassing 1 trillion interactions – clicks, navigations, highlights, scrolls, and frustration indicators. Annual recurring revenue has increased by more than 70% year-over-year.

Future Plans

FullStory intends to further invest in research and development to enhance its real-time intelligence capabilities. The company also plans to expand its presence more aggressively into European and Asia Pacific markets.

Competitive Landscape

FullStory operates in a competitive market alongside companies like Glassbox and Decibel. However, the company asserts that its tools are present on a greater number of websites than its three largest competitors combined.

How FullStory Works

FullStory leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze user behavior across various digital interfaces. This analysis spans departments like product, customer success, marketing, and engineering.

With user consent, the platform tracks behaviors such as repeated clicks in delayed areas (“rage clicks”), broken links resulting from JavaScript errors, and frustrated scrolling or cursor movements with minimal subsequent activity. It deliberately avoids using eye-tracking or sentiment analysis of customer input data.

The collected insights are then packaged into data streams compatible with visualization tools like Tableau (given Salesforce’s investment), spreadsheets, or other customer-preferred formats. While FullStory doesn’t directly implement fixes, it provides suggestions for resolving identified issues.

The Impact of Digital Transformation

A significant factor driving FullStory’s recent success is the increasing centrality of digital business. The shift to online experiences, accelerated by COVID-19 and social distancing measures, has led to unprecedented website traffic. Organizations are prioritizing digital usability, creating favorable conditions for companies like FullStory.

“The category was so nascent to begin with that we had to explain the concept to customers,” Voigt explained, noting the initial challenge of educating potential clients about the value of digital experience insights.

However, the pandemic dramatically increased the importance of digital experiences, resulting in a surge of inbound interest.

Customer Loyalty and Industry Trends

FullStory benefits from customer loyalty, as users often bring their preferred tools with them when changing jobs. The growing adoption of AI in structuring unstructured data has also boosted the analytics sector, attracting investor interest in FullStory’s business model.

Investor Perspectives

“We are very excited to partner with the FullStory team as they continue to expand and build a truly extraordinary technology brand that improves the digital experience for all stakeholders,” stated Alex Melamud, who led the transaction for Permira Growth.

Bruce Chizen, a senior advisor at Permira, added, “Traditional analytics have been upended by AI- and ML-enabled approaches that can instantly uncover nuanced patterns and anomalies in customer behavior.” He further emphasized FullStory’s position as a market leader in Digital Experience Intelligence (DXI) and the fastest-growing company in the category, becoming the standard for digital experience data.

Chizen will be joining the FullStory Board of Directors as part of this funding round.