Balance sheet H1 2023

Here we are, the second edition of Starfox development reviews. Here, we share the good news, the bad news, the discoveries, the doubts and the successes on :

• Starfox Analytics development

• Recent customer projects

• Team evolution

• Operational changes

Continued growth despite a difficult start to the year

Sales up +100% vs. H1 2022

And quite rightly so, since there were only two of us in the first half of 2022. We were four in Q1 2023, then welcomed two new collaborators for Q2 to complete the team.

Sales 2021 → 2023 by quarter :

🚀 We've already achieved full-year 2022 sales in H1 2023.

Challenge met for the start of 2023

The beginning of the year was difficult, with two phenomena occurring simultaneously: unfavorable economic conditions, combined with the hiring of two new employees, which led to an increase in the company's expenses.

At the time, we were still too dependent on fixed-price assignments and didn't have enough management contracts to stabilize our business.

We have set up a number of sales initiatives:

• Cold mailing via personalized campaigns (automatic site audit scans)

• Cold calling via a freelancer to arrange appointments with customer and agency leads

• Lead Generation agency services.

• Contact 50 agencies to offer our services

In retrospect, here are our conclusions:

• The lead generation agency didn't work. The sales representative on the phone couldn't bounce questions off callers specific to our area of expertise.

• We need an in-house sales management.

• On the agency side, it's best to develop and deepen business relationships with a select few players.

• Focus on existing customer and partner relationships

Developing relationships with partners

From the outset, Starfox has relied on its partner agencies. We've been in contact with around fifty agencies since the beginning of the adventure. However, we have decided to concentrate on developing our relationships with a handful of players with whom we work very well, and who offer interesting projects with mature customers.

We'll need to do some evangelism work, organizing workshops and webinars for our sales teams. We continue to participate with them in calls for tender. Integrating our expertise in data collection and activation seems to help us win tenders.

Customer trends and projects

Evolving market trends

GA4 migrations : In the first half of 2023, we carried out numerous migrations to GA4. Our customers took the opportunity to review the quality and standards of their data collection.

Regulatory compliance : We've received many requests to implement alternatives to Google Analytics, such as Piwik Pro, Matomo and Piano Analytics.

The latest news is that the European Commission has adopted a new decision recognizing that the USA now guarantees an equivalent level of protection for personal data transfers. This decision could have positive repercussions for French and European players using Google Analytics 4 or American hosting providers. However, it is important to remain vigilant about data confidentiality and to take steps to ensure compliance with data protection regulations.

CNIL changes its position

We are pleased for our customers who have followed our recommendations and not removed Google Analytics following the CNIL announcements, but rather used the opportunity to move to server-side by sensibly interpreting certain directives to compliance without rendering GA4 completely obsolete via proxyfication. Ideally, by testing other tools on the market in parallel, just in case. Our argument: Google is working in the direction of the legislators, and what about all the other SaaS hosted in the U.S. like your CRM?

Server-side migrations

There are still too few requests for server-side migrations, even though they offer clear advantages, from data collection to script control and improved site performance. For experience with our French hosting partner addingwell.com has been excellent.

Trends 2023/2024

We're moving from reliable data collection to audience analysis, ETL pipelines, reverse ETL (the process of data integration in analytics, which involves extracting data from different sources, transforming it into a suitable format, and then uploading it back to media partners, CRM). The players are increasingly mature and technologically equipped.

Latest customer projects

Le Figaro.fr, France's leading news site, stands out for its high reactivity to news events, its innovative approach to live video and community. We are working on the issues of data collection reliability and regulatory compliance with a server-side proxyfication implementation. We have renewed the mandate, on a fee-for-service basis, with a new mission around SEO analysis.

ADN a well-known streaming platform for manga fans. The mission consisted in overhauling data collection, streamlining GA/GTM accounts and ensuring compliance with CNIL guidelines. Migration of possible tags to server-side, BigQuery exports and the creation of a customized dashboard.

Laboratoire Native is a cosmetics group that owns the Roger&Gallet, Lierac, Phyto and Jowaé brands. The 4 brands represent 10 countries for a total of 40 sites. In addition to redesigning tracking and dashboards with BigQuery as the data source. We developed scripts to automatically configure a large number of GA4 properties on the fly.

Stand Privé is a French e-commerce site selling fashionable clothes, shoes and accessories at affordable prices. We audited the GTM container configuration and its impact on site performance. We also resolved data collection issues, notably in Facebook CAPI and Ads server-side.

Secret de Loly markets high-quality, organic skincare products containing natural ingredients without breaking the bank. Configuration and debugging of Elevar on Shopify, enrichment of tracking, optimization of GTM tags and implementation of a dashboard following KPI workshops. Genuine guidance and support for all one-off requirements over several months to ensure reliable data collection.

Team evolution

2 new Starfoxians

Starfox went from 4 to 6 employees at the start of 2023!

Unfortunately, one of our employees left us to pursue other ambitions and personal projects. This situation gave us the opportunity to introspect and create our departure process, with the aim of continually improving and providing the best possible environment for our employees.

The crème de la crème among new employees:

Ex-COO and Senior Data Consultant, David has nearly 10 years' experience in agencies. David is a true geek at heart. He taught himself to code back when GTM variables were still called macros. David is also a guitarist!

Having passed through the hands of an excellent Groupe Pierre & Vacances school, Fadoua is based in Brittany, and in her spare time enjoys hiking, cooking, Mangas and Hollywood series.

New recruitments planned

🎯 Objective: recruit 5 new profiles by the end of 2023

We had forecast between 5 and 10 new recruits in 2023. To date, we've already recruited 2. You can find out more about our 👍Avantagesemployees here. Our top priorities are the following two recruitments:

Sales Manager - Jobs at Starfox Analytics

Remote - CDI. Join the passionate team at Starfox Analytics. Our ambition is to become the reference in Web Analytics in France by combining technical expertise & in-house tech developments.

Technical Analytics Lead - Jobs at Starfox Analytics

Remote - CDI. Join the passionate team at Starfox Analytics. Our ambition is to become the reference in Web Analytics in France by combining technical expertise & in-house tech developments.

🚀 Join Starfox AnalyticsJoinour team of passionate experts! We're recruiting experienced data marketing profiles.

Internal organization

Operational developments

• Setting up half-yearly OKRs with managers

• Definition of Ownerships, i.e. areas of responsibility (information architecture, R&D, Privacy, Brand awareness, etc.).

• Reorganization of instances (Weekly, SFXDays, Retros, Mornings etc.) to free up as much time as possible during the week.

• Set up weekly sprints for internal activities

• Set up a Core Team to make operational management decisions and monitor staffing and budgets.

• Improved reporting :

Financial reporting in Looker Studio based on our accounting data exported to BigQuery.

Operational reporting in Looker Studio of staffing exported from our tools into BigQuery.

SFX Days #8 is already here!

Starfox is a 100% remote agency that meets physically 2 days every 6 weeks to get closer together and work on predefined in-house topics, both in terms of monitoring and R&D, which are voted on in advance.

Examples of topics covered:

• Business update from Edouard on the last 6-week cycle

• Team feedback - team assessment and setting concrete actions

• Knowledge-sharing sessions - R&D topics, customer feedback, training courses

• Organization of Wikis - our internally shared knowledge base with our convictions

• Organization of a hackathon on a pre-prepared topic

Back-to-school hackathon

Together with a partner, we're planning to organize a hackathon around a common topic. The principle is simple: it's a challenge where teams get together to work collaboratively on a project, usually tech and relatively innovative, for a set period of time. Ideas range from the creation of a Customer Data Platform and segments for media activation, to product analytics-focused explorations for a site behind a hosted environment.

👋 If you would like to finance a hackathon,please contact us at hello@starfox-analytics.com

👉 Follow Starfox Analytics on LinkedinAneed, a question? Our team will get back to you as soon as possible→ Follow Starfox on Linkedin

Next development axis: brand awareness

Our visibility is still our weak point

We communicated too little in H1 2023.

We want to focus our services on advising our customers and providing maximum added value. So we're opening the 🚀Casd'usages section on Inside starfox with our first articles:

📖Developcompetitive advantage by exploiting site search behavior

📖Detectingthe most influential content with a view to conversion

📖Developa more relevant product offering by analyzing search behavior

📖Givingsuperpowers to the UX team by enriching qualitative analysis tools

📖Createdynamic customer support while protecting sensitive data

R.I.P the Discord community

The aim of Discord is to promote knowledge sharing and mutual support in the web analytics industry in France 🇫🇷. Initially, Discord allowed us to have an unlimited history. Unfortunately, a lack of strategy and effort on our part prevented us from making it active.

As part of our good resolutions, we're going to find another way to produce value for the community and unite our colleagues. To be continued... In the meantime, you can always follow us on Linkedin.

Big news coming soon stay tuned!

We'll be announcing some big news for Starfox in the next few months.

The challenges of S2 2023

• Develop our visibility and reputation with a new strategic plan

• Work on joint projects with our partners and generate use cases

• Open a Data Engineering practice

• Accelerating the innovation and R&D program