Special Report: Listed tech player Family Insights Group is making steady operational improvements, as it competes for a chunk of the $45 billion family cybersecurity market.

The company’s core product is the Family Insights (FI) Parental Control solution, which includes an app that allows parents to monitor for internet risks, track GPS movements and take control over excessive usage patterns in real time.

The app can be downloaded to Android and Apple devices and carries out a number of different monitoring services, including time spent on gaming, chat apps and social media.

In its latest announcement to the market, Family Insights (ASX:FAM) said its efforts to simplify the app have given rise to “significant improvements” in the number of parents who are completing the download process.

Less barriers to completion

App setup completion rates have risen to 95 per cent, up from just 28 per cent in 2018.

Speaking with Stockhead, CEO Sean Smith provided some details around what’s driven the change.

“The app utilises a lot of each device’s in-built functionality, and there are a number of permission steps to go through,” he said.

“The first release had a configuration pathway of up to 27 steps which needed to be completed for the app to work. Now, through a major UX review and re-architecture, we’ve cut those 27 steps back to just three simple steps, which has led to a much higher setup completion rate.”

In addition, “the app itself recognises if parents don’t have their children’s devices configured, and reminds parents they still need to set them up”.

Family Insights also uses automated email prompts to alert parents to setup their children’s devices when there is a greater chance that the children and their devices will be more available, such as before school or in the early evening.

Those changes have seen first-week completion rates for child devices increase from three per cent to 19 per cent.

Lower costs

Mr Smith says the company is also working to increase its marketing efficiency, with the goal of reducing the cost of new customer acquisition, particularly across digital channels.

“We’ve been utilising performance marketing methods including paid Google search and app store search across both the Android and Apple app stores. So, it’s a combination of various search techniques that are tapping into existing demand, and by optimising the returning traffic for efficiency we are able to optimise the average cost per download,” Smith explained.

As recently as December, marketing costs per download were coming in above $20, “but we’ve got it down to under $10 and we’re hoping to push that even lower”.

Getting frugal (Frugl)

Along with its core product, Family Insights has also finalised the acquisition of Frugl, a comparison search engine which compares grocery prices across different supermarkets.

Smith noted that Frugl “is seemingly a very different vertical” to the family insights app. But in fact, he thinks the two products can work well in tandem.

“Both products are far more similar than they may seem. They both take real-time behavioural data and process it in the cloud, they are both targeted to families, and each generates data insights that can be further commercialised.” Smith said.

Frugl works by tracking changes in daily prices at the major supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths, within localised areas, so users can compare prices at nearby locations to build cheaper weekly baskets across the major retailers.

Smith’s strategic vision is to utilise data insights gained from both platforms to provide a number of B2B data products targeted at retailers, suppliers and advertisers.

Family Insights is a Stockhead advertiser.
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