While everyone is talking about autonomous vehicles, an Israeli development is already autonomously performing an activity that is difficult for most of us: increasing sales on websites and virtual stores, performing it completely automatically.

It may seem like distant history, but only 15 years ago we used maps, made of paper, to get from one place to another. Yes, that used to be a thing...but the vision of one man, Ehud Shabtai, who wanted to get from place to place as quickly as possible, changed the world in 2006. Since then, Waze has become a game changer, installed on the smartphones of some 140 million users worldwide. Is the revolution caused by Israeli enterprises such as Waze and Mobileye in the world of transportation recurring today - this time led by another Israeli entrepreneur, operating in the digital world?

Increasing sales by tens of percent and more

Quietly, under the radar, the Israeli company, twik, has been working on an invention that almost every marketer and website owner has been waiting for: a system that enables you to significantly increase sales without human contact. With the help of artificial and business intelligence components, twik's personalization system knows how to present customized content and products to each potential client, significantly increasing the chances of purchase. Everything is done automatically, without human intervention.

Twik has helped increase sales on thousands of websites and virtual stores. In some cases, the increase in sales has reached tens of percent, and in some instances, it has reached a 100% or more increase. Now, after years of intensive development, the completion of a $12 million seed fundraising round and the creation of upgrades and plugins, twik has fully launched - and the good news of a solution that automatically increases website sales is spreading rapidly.

Along with working with many distributors in Israel and around the world who have already benefited from twik, the company has signed a cooperation agreement with Google and an agreement for sharing technological information with Facebook.

Serial entrepreneur - since the age of 13

Behind twik, which was founded in 2017, is Roi Sorezki. Sorezki is a serial entrepreneur, who began his career in the world of entrepreneurship at the age of 13 when he set up his first venture: "Pitzutz" (Explosion) youth portal.  Pitzuts was established before the "Nana" and "Tapuz" sites, and was one of the five leading sites in Israel in 1997-2000, with daily traffic of close to 20,000 users.

By the age of 21, the prodigy of technological entrepreneurship had already taken off for England, where he helped develop the marketing system of investment houses and brokerages. After four years in London, Sorezki returned to Israel, setting up a series of other technological ventures. One of them is Sorezki Ltd., which deals with website promotion and the development of online marketing technologies.

At that time, says Sorezki, he was first exposed to the great paradox of the digital marketing world. "For more than a decade, Sorezki Ltd. specialized in promoting sites to the top places in Google and increased traffic to our customers' digital assets. Over time, we have realized that even when tremendous efforts are invested in driving traffic to the digital asset, and even as traffic grows by hundreds of percent, sales volume does not necessarily soar in parallel.

"Analyzing the data, we realized that something in the user experience causes users to leave the digital asset empty-handed. This 'something' is in many cases the completely identical user experience experienced by different users with completely different needs. twik grew out of the desire to tailor the experience of using the digital asset to the needs of each user like a fitted glove, thus significantly increasing sales volume," he recalls.

The great challenge of the digital commerce world

"Along with the generic user experience, which presents identical content to users with different needs, the user is overwhelmed by a multiplicity of options that causes paralysis. The user gets lost between the multiplicity of products and information, and in the end decides not to decide," says Sorezki. "The result is a quick exit, sometimes even after the user has already added items to the shopping cart, which creates great frustration among marketers and asset owners".

"In recent years, technological tools have been developed to increase digital asset conversion rate. However, their cost is high, and their operation involves complex configuration that requires intensive involvement of professionals.

"Marketers and digital property owners are craving a simple and effective solution that will allow them to increase sales at the push of a button. We realized there was a void here and decided to fill it - combining our deep understanding of marketing with the technological capabilities we have accumulated over the years."

Increasing sales automatically

twik maximally utilizes traffic to the digital asset by actions that increase sales volume completely automatically. "This makes twik's personalization system the first solution of its kind in the world, making personalization accessible to any business, of any size - at a fraction of the cost of complicated to operate, cumbersome systems," says Dan Schamir, twik's CMO.

The twik autopilot starts working as soon as you connect it to the site or virtual store. In the first stage, twik's artificial intelligence engines learn to identify the business goals of the site: from getting users to provide details, through adding items to the cart, to making an online purchase.

"Once the system learns what the business objectives of the site are, it performs automated actions that will increase the conversion rate (i.e., the chance that the user will perform the desired action), by presenting content tailored to the user's needs and desires - needs that even the user is unaware of."

How does the system identify the needs of the users?

"twik's personalization system is based on analyzing the site visitors' data according to dozens of different parameters: from gender and geographical location to age range, from interests and sites or social networks to which the user is connected to the patterns of use of the customer's site," explains Schamir. "For example, the products that will be displayed to a design enthusiast who has visited the Etsy portal will probably be different from the content that will be displayed to a visitor connected to the Twitch gaming site."

Depending on the analysis of needs and behavior patterns, the system adapts the website or store to the needs of each user - from presenting the most relevant content for him or her, to changing the menu and navigation routes. The system can make changes even in the smallest details - such as the color of the command buttons.

"In this way, a million users will see a million different experiences, different content and different colors when they enter the website or virtual store," explains Schamir. "It's like going into a big clothing store in a mall, asking the seller to help you. The seller will probably try to offer you the clothes that best suit your needs, such as men's (not women's) clothes that are designed for everyday use (rather than an event), made of 100% cotton in your favorite color (say blue). The more the clothes the seller offers fit your needs, the more likely you are to leave the store with full bags."

"Imagine the seller would know exactly what your needs are - and even offers clothes that precisely fit your significant other, all without having to ask even one question. This is exactly what twik's solution does: it uses smart analytics to identify user needs - even when these are unconscious intentions or needs, in order to offer the user a proposal tailored to his or her measurements."

The end of the Age of Cookies

One common method of tailoring user experience to the visitor was through cookies, but this solution is fading, following Apple and Google's announcements that they intend to stop using them to protect users' privacy. These announcements have become a nightmare for advertisers around the world. While the world of marketing and advertising is trying to find a worthy alternative to cookies, it turns out that the solution is simpler than we thought.

According to Yossi Gadol, Twik's CTO, "As early as 2017, we identified the potential of FingerPrint technology for data collection due to its great advantages over the existing method. For example, the level of reliability of cookies in terms of the number of unique users on the site is only 20% -70%. FingerPrint, however, provides accurate reporting of all users, even when using incognito browsing - all this without the user having to actively confirm the collection of information, as is currently done with the cookies method.

"In addition, the time period of applicability of FingerPrint technology is double that of cookies and reaches a full year, with the information collected on user characteristics much wider and more diverse. All of these make the FingerPrint solution we developed the only proven alternative to cookies that is currently operating successfully."

The connection between FingerPrint technology and twik's personalization system provides accurate, diverse and reliable information about the needs of each visitor, for the purpose of adjusting content and increasing sales, all while maintaining the user's privacy in accordance with international privacy standards: "The fact that the user's characteristics are detached from the user's personal identity leads to the presentation of customized content, while maintaining the anonymity of the visitor," says Yossi Gadol.

The twik app is conquering Shopify

The growing demand and success of twik led to the launch of a personalization app for Shopify, one of the popular platforms for setting up virtual stores. "There is an inconceivable gap between the ease with which a virtual store can be built today, and the effort that needs to be invested to generate in-store sales. We wanted to close that gap through the personalization app for Shopify," says twik's VP of Strategy, Avi Goldfinger.

Success was quick: within two months of the twik app being uploaded to the Shopify app store, it was already in use by over 1,200 stores. Since its publication, the app has been at the top of the list of the most popular apps in the store 3 times, and occasionally even climbs to the top of the rankings. In addition, it was crowned as one of the four apps featured by the Shopify team - Staff Picks.

"The first personalization solution of its kind for virtual stores"

"The field of personalization solutions includes complex and cumbersome solutions, which cannot be customized in a simple and automatic way. twik's solution is the first of its kind in the world that can fully and automatically personalize the in-store shopping experience," says Sorezki.

Who is twik for?

‍Because the twik website personalization system does all the behind-the-scenes work for marketers and digital property owners, it is suitable for a wide range of organizations - from small businesses to large organizations and corporations. The owner of a virtual store can improve the performance of the store automatically, from the moment they run the twik solution.

Enterprise organizations can get full details with an advanced interface, have the ability to perform advanced analysis, while having the assistance of a client portfolio manager to improve performance. Twik's prices are accessible, starting at $15 per month; those who undecided can download the free version, which allows 30 days free trial.

What will the world of personalization look like in the coming years?

"Even as we speak, twik is analyzing the hundreds of millions of operations performed each month on the digital assets monitored by it, leading to continuous system tuning and improving accuracy and performance," says Sorezki.

What to expect in the future? "The world is moving by leaps and bounds towards systems that perform routine operations autonomously, such as autonomous vehicles that will transport us from place to place without human intervention," he replies. "It will take some more time for autonomous vehicles to hit the roads en masse, but there are areas in which the future is already here, where today the machines can perform well autonomously.

"One of them is an area that is difficult for most people: increasing sales on websites and virtual stores, and the platform handles it all completely automatically. This trend will only get more and more pronounced, for the benefit of digital property owners and for the benefit of site visitors, who will enjoy a customized user experience."