Press

Copenhagen, Denmark, April 30th 2013

Press Release:

Simple Does It: 130K EUR Revenue in Two Months from Launching Effortless Web Shop

Allow users without computer skills to launch an online store within minutes. This was the bold ambition behind SimpleSite.com's new webshop module launched February 1st. Two months later and 1200 customers have already subscribed to the new module.

"We could have launched the webshop much sooner but spent a great amount of time on optimizing the features and cutting out unnecessary parts. It's mission critical to us that our users experience instant success and don't get lost in loads of options," says CEO and founder, Morten Elk, of SimpleSite.com.

65,000 global customers were offered the shop module

With an existing base of 65,000 paying customers, SimpleSite.com made a silent launch of their webshop in January. The new webshop module was first launched in the Danish market, without any announcement, in an effort to test out how well it worked, gauge the response of customers, as well as to fix any technical issues before scaling up to the global markets. Then SimpleSite.com launched globally on February 1st. Only two months in, and already 1200 customers have purchased the new webshop module, with the customer base continuing to grow significantly every week. These first 1200 shops alone will generate over 130,000 EUR in revenue for SimpleSite.com in 2013. "Our success shows that it's a great business opportunity to enable people with no computer skills to create their own presence on the web," CEO Morten Elk says.

USA, France and the Nordic region take the lead

  • 3/4 of the 1200 shops were created in the Nordic countries, France, and the USA.
  • Half of the 1200 shops are existing customers adding the webshop module to their account. The rest are new customers who have signed up with SimpleSite since January.
  • The shop module costs 15 EUR per month on top of the SimpleSite base fee.
  • Payment is integrated with PayPal, so new shops start receiving payments immediately.

Morten Elk expects the number of shops to grow even more rapidly once SimpleSite.com launches in nine new countries later this year.

SimpleSite is both a Minimum and a Most Viable Product
The January launch of the shop can be seen as a testing of the MVP or ”Minimum Viable Product”, a fundamental idea to the Lean Startup methodology. But SimpleSite takes this concept even further: ”We constantly explore just how compact and lightweight we can make any feature to deliver the simplest product possible. Well-tested and well-designed simplicity is our main value creation, so to us, the ”Minimum” in MVP is a key value driver in itself, not just a stepping stone to a bigger product. MVP also means ”Most Viable Product” to us and our users,” CEO Morten Elk says.

Further information.
Please contact:
Morten Elk, CEO and founder
Phone: +45 2029 7505
Email: morten@simplesite.com



SimpleSite Nov. 9, 2012.

Press Release:

SimpleSite secures new funding to accelerate international growth.

SimpleSite secures new funding to accelerate its international growth: 15 markets will increase to 34 before the end of 2013

Copenhagen-based SimpleSite, which already operates in fourteen European countries and the U.S., now has the clout to continue its successful international expansion.

A capital injection of almost EUR 2 million is behind the company’s objective to launch sites in nineteen additional countries in less than eighteen months, setting the ambitious goal of annual turnover growth exceeding 50 percent.

With 300,000 new users every month, SimpleSite has already made its mark as a serious player in its market. In just a few years, the company achieved solid international growth, with 43 percent of turnover coming from international markets in 2011.

“This investment is a fantastic opportunity to speed up our growth significantly,” says SimpleSite’s CEO, Morten Elk. “Our business model has proved its sustainability in fifteen countries, and we know exactly how to penetrate a new market successfully.”

Aggressive Growth
“This investment means we can leverage the scalability of our profitable business model, and launch in new markets even more quickly and aggressively.”

“Since 2005, we have set our sights firmly on international development, creating a profitable business model with annual growth rates of 38 percent in the last five years. Now we have the resources to really pull out all the stops,” says Morten Elk.

The man behind the investment of almost EUR 2 million is the experienced IT entrepreneur Kaare Danielsen, who has built up Scandinavia’s largest, dominating company in the field of job databases.

About SimpleSite
SimpleSite offers simple, user-friendly websites to private individuals and small businesses. SimpleSite’s scalable business model means that investments in new customers are typically profitable within one to two years. After an initial investment in the first three years, the company has returned a profit every year. In 2011, turnover of over EUR 3.6 million generated a pre-tax profit of EUR 0.4 million.

SimpleSite is arguably the only company in its field that has expanded to most countries. Even more impressively, this organic growth has been financed by the company's own earnings.

Contact information:.
Morten Elk, founder and CEO
Phone: +45 2029 7505
Email: morten@SimpleSite.com

Download.
Press Release - Fact Sheet - Morten Elk (photo) - Zip file