E-Commerce Startup Joyned Closes $4 mln Seed Funding Round

Joyned, an E-commerce startup based in Jerusalem, has raised $4 million in seed funding to allow retailers to provide a truly social shopping experience.

The funding round was co-led by angel investors Arthur Stark, former long-time President of Bed Bath & Beyond; Yair Goldfinger, Founder of Dotomi and ICQ; and Rafael Ashkenazi, Managing Director at Hard Rock Digital. The funding will allow Joyned to expand and scale its platform in the United States to meet the increasing demand.

The startup was founded in 2017 to create a social marketing platform that enables merchants to increase on-site engagement by removing the need for third-party platforms. This approach looks to leverage natural social engagement to improve website traffic organically, allowing merchants to lower acquisition costs and increase profitability while also ensuring customers have a better experience.

According to Joyned, retailers using the platform have already shown an increase as high as 15% in overall sales, which is the result of word-of-mouth referring. In addition to this, retention rates have increased by over 250%, which when considered in combination with an increase of 40% in traffic shows an increase in customer satisfaction when engaging in a social shopping experience. Jonathan Abraham, CEO of Joyned said about the startup’s approach:

“The ecommerce landscape is rapidly shifting toward social media platforms, and threatens retailers’ ability to build direct relationships with their customers and increases customer acquisition costs. But by using Joyned, brands can infuse some of the social aspect into shopping experiences within their own ecosystems without having to rely on a third-party platform. Providing brands with a direct ‘social-to-sale’ pipeline not only increases revenue but also increases customer engagement on-site.”

With the E-commerce industry becoming more competitive by the day, merchants find themselves looking to capitalize on any advantage they can get. The E-commerce startup is looking to allow them to do this by returning to the basics: interacting more directly with the customer.