SimpleSite, as the name suggests, is a platform dedicated to make it easy for SME’s and individuals alike to create their own websites. The Danish company began its journey quite some time ago, 2003 to be exact. That hardly makes them a young startup anymore, however success stories from our region are always pleasant to catch up on.
When we last covered them in 2012, they had rounded out a $2 million fund for international growth. Looking at them today we see that is exactly what they’ve done. Big time.
According to SimpleSite Founder and CEO Morten Elk, the website has users in every single country in the world with the exception of three. They are currently advertising in as many as 124 countries and 24 of said countries (as of 2013 nine new countries, including Brazil, Russia and Malaysia) are being specifically targeted.
The company announced a small net deficit last year, which was mostly due to the company’s heavy investments. It seems like the confidence for big spending came from the estimates of future net profits from user growth, which they estimate to be roughly DKK20 million.
“Our customer base growth is the result of targeted investment in online marketing, where we can fairly accurately predict the value of every cent we spend,” commented Elk.
Though the precise position of companies in this market is difficult to determine, SimpleSite says it is currently among the top 10 in the global market for websites for small businesses. This could change as the company is showing serious determination to breach the better half of that lot, and become one of the top 5.
“A large company can hire more people and attract the best programmers, so growth gives us the opportunity to improve our market position through product development,” Elk said.
Because of the massive amounts of new trial subscriptions each month (several hundred thousand, according to them), SimpleSite can conduct A/B testing in product development.
“When we added a background picture to new users’ websites, 12% more chose to become customers. We could determine this with certainty because we have so many new customers each month. In this way, our size enables us to create a better product,” Elk added.
Seventy percent of the Denmark-based company’s turnover in 2013 was international and 88 percent of all new customers came from abroad.
