Spinnakr releases idiot-proof analytics engine so anyone can grasp big data

Spinnakr released its product today that works as a “Big Data for Dummies.” The company also announced raising a seed round from Andreessen Horowitz, 500 Startups, Point Nine Capital, Sandhill Angels, a cofounder of comScore, and other angels.

Spinnakr’s platform seeks to make data analytics so simple, accessible, and comprehensible that anyone can do it. The technology serves as an “analytics and optimization consultant” that can sense important opportunities and give insight as to how to respond.

“Spinnakr’s insights driven analytics eliminates the need for digital strategists or expensive consultants to interpret web analytics data and make sites changes based on that data,” said founder Michael Mayernick in an email “Previously this process could cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and take months. We found it intolerable that the value of big data is still locked away.”

The system collects visitor data and runs it through real-time analytics engines to detect trends and then prioritizes the information and notifies the business owner/marketing person of the most important ones. Startups, small business owners, bloggers etc…using the system receive a news feed of whats going on in words, rather than charts and graphs. It could read “you have a traffic spike from Facebook” or “you have a new search term driving traffic.” Once the discovery is displayed, Spinnakr will present a targeted, specific recommendation on how to act on that data. For example, if there is an influx of job seekers to your site, the engine suggest that you redirect them to a careers page to learn more about job opportunities.

Mayernick said that many clients don’t want to interpret data on their own and prefer to be told what to do. Spinnakr still does advanced, real-time analysis like competitors Chartbeat, Google Analytics, or Optimizely, but presents it a more clear-cut, idiot-proof way.

Mayernick and cofounder Adam Bonnifield previously worked on digital strategy for a political campaign. They built online targeting systems for politics, working with congressional, senatorial, and gubernatorial campaigns, and said their technology helped set fundraising records in 2006 and 2008. While data scientists and experienced strategists were able to extract value from data, this was still a challenge for regular people. The two wanted to open up the benefits of data to all.

Analytics are becoming an increasingly important (and necessary) element of any business that operates online. To remain competitive, companies of all sizes need to be aware of what drives or hurts their traffic and engagement, and react accordingly. Those that can’t afford or understand analytics products like Chartbeat, Google Analytics, or Optimizely can use Spinnakr. The demand is clearly there — Spinnakr has more than 5,000 business on its waiting list and said it already optimizes 10 million page views each month for active SMB, e-commerce, and emerging enterprise customers. It also said that users frequently see over 100% conversion lift on messaging, compared to the 10 to 30 percent of traditional web optimization methods like A/B testing.

Spinnakr works out of AOL’s First Floor Labs in Palo Alto and Washington DC. It was founded in 2011 and has six employees.