Website and app analytics startup FullStory Inc. today divulged that it has raised $103 million in new funding from a group of investors that included the venture capital arms of Dell Technologies Inc., Salesforce.com Inc. and Google LLC.

The startup said that the round gives it a valuation of $1.8 billion.

Atlanta-based FullStory provides a platform that enables companies to analyze how customers interact with their websites and apps to identify ways of improving the user experience. The startup’s platform can spot technical issues such as web pages that load too slowly and content that fails to render. FullStory also detects more subtle usability issues, like when a confusing interface design leads some customers to mistake a product logo for a navigation button.

There are cases where a web page doesn’t contain any technical or presentation errors, but still causes less than optimal user experience. This scenario often arises when key elements of a web page or application section are located in a part of the interface where they’re difficult for users to notice. FullStory says that its technology can help in such scenarios as well.

The startup’s platform overlays a heat map of user activity onto a web page to help marketers determine if some page elements are being clicked by users less frequently than expected. Should the heat map show, for example, that users rarely interact with the “buy now” button in some web pages, the marketing team could move the button to a more prominent location. 

FullStory targets several different industries with its platform.

Software-as-a-service companies can use the platform to find ways of improving the user experience in their cloud applications. FullStory  identifies parts of the application interface that present usability challenges for customers. This information, the startup argues, can make answering technical support requests easier and help a firm’s developers align interface updates more closely with user expectations. 

Another major market for FullStory is the e-commerce segment. The startup promises to help online retailers not only improve the user experience on their websites but also boost sales in the process. To this end, FullStory offers features that help marketers understand how usability issues such as pages that load slowly affect their customers’ purchase decisions.

Across the software-as-a-service, online retail and  other segments where the startup competes, it claims to have more than 3,100 customers. VMware Inc. and Lowe’s Companies Inc. are among those customers. The startup claims that strong demand has boosted its revenues by 70% in the past year, growth it hopes to continue using the newly raised $103 million funding round.

FullStory will invest a portion of the capital in expanding its international presence. The startup additionally has plans to accelerate research and development, with a particular focus on increasing the number of data points it can collect about how customers interact with brands’ websites.

“We’re eager to use this investment to uncover experience improvement signals and push the boundaries of the DXI platform with  innovation in data science and machine learning,” FullStory founder and Chief Executive Officer Scott Voigt wrote in a blog post published this morning. “Ultimately, these will support more use cases and deliver business value across organizations.”

Alongside the venture capital arms of Dell, Salesforce, and Google, the startup’s newly announced $103 million raise saw the participation of investment firm Permira, which led the round. Permira senior advisor Bruce Chizen, the former CEO of Adobe Inc., is joining the FullStory board following the round.

Multiple returning investors took part as well. Overall, FullStory has raised about $172 million funding to date.

Image: FullStory