Archive for: start up

My Gengo – Translation by People, Not Computers

One of the emerging trends in the online world is to have a translation service. Google Translate is probably the best well known with ad-ons and blog widgets to help people translate web pages, documents and the likes. However, the problem is that it’s often a little too ‘literal’ meaning some sentences don’t make sense when translated. They get ‘lost in translation’, if you will.

My Gengo allow users to upload a document, have it translated by a professional and then returned to them at a very low rate (normally 70% lower than freelance translators charge on sites like Elance). I think this is a great idea. A few times I have needed letters and documents translated for my business and have had to spend quite a lot of money to ensure they’re translated properly – especially when I’m sending them to a client or a potential one.

The site offers translation services between languages like English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Italian and Russian. They recently received investment from tech entrepreneur Dave McClure so it looks like this start-up might just be a success in the near future.

ClickTale: Track How Users Interact and Use Your Website

Knowing what users do on your site can be extremely helpful. Why? Simply, because it gives you the opportunity to optimize your pages so that the premium features and advertisements get the very best attention.

ClickTale is a program for websites that records what users do on your website. Basically, it gives you back a video of just what they’re up to showing you where they pause, click, read and ultimately leave your site. This program can help you fix problems with your page to keep users on it longer.

There are four different membership levels. The most basic is ‘Free’ which is recommended for small-time bloggers. This will show you what 400 random users have been up to and give you somewhat of an idea of how to improve your site. However, the real goodies come as you progress up into Bronze, Silver and Gold.

With these membership programs you get a heat map which shows you the most active parts of your webpage, recordings of thousands of visitors and customer support via telephone.

This is a great piece of kit to for any website to have whether your visitor numbers are soaring or floundering. It’s always good to know where you can improve. So whether you blog or own a cool start-up, ClickTale is for you.