Attractive.ai Raises $1M for Web Design Virtual Assistant

Helsinki-based startup Attractive.ai has closed a $1 million funding round led by Superhero Capital. The company’s Poe virtual assistant analyzes and compiles reports on websites and other digital creations, simulating a human user and offering advice to correct errors and generally improve user experience.

Attractive Online

Attractive.ai claims its goal is to “rid the world of bad websites.” To accomplish this lofty ambition, the company designed a virtual assistant named Poe. Poe is built on a large database of information about user experience and website design. The AI uses that data to examine every aspect of visiting a website or using digital tools as though it were a human. Once the results are gathered, the AI creates a report laying out any issues it found, screenshotting where necessary. Poe then makes suggestions on ways to upgrade elements like layout, accessibility, navigation, and technical functions. It’s not a one-time event, either. Poe makes regular inspections of the website, spotting issues like long load times and broken links to report back to the site’s owners. Poe has been limited to paying clients until now, Attractive.ai just debuted a free, more limited version of Poe that offers monthly, rather than continuous, advice to website owners. Giving potential clients a taste is part of the company’s strategy to bring Poe to a much wider audience.

“Our ultimate goal is that 80% of the world’s web uses Attractive to help their sites,” Attractive.ai COO Marc Salas Martínez said in a statement. “After all, we want the whole world’s experience to be better. That meant we had to think of ways that even those with fewer funds could benefit.”

Enterprising AI

Startups that provide virtual assistants to businesses are proliferating all over. Digital assistant developer Aider and enterprise voice app platform Vobo point to the value of this kind of technology, especially when it’s flexible enough to be used by most industries. Along with Superhero Capital, the seed funding came from a handful of individual investors from Finland and Japan, including Keisuke Honda, the top-rated soccer player in Japan. Attractive.ai is still very young, launching only last year at Helsinki’s giant Slush startup expo. According to a tongue-in-cheek description on the company’s website, that may be because that’s when Poe, the “Founder/Spirit of Experience,” arrived.

“Poe didn’t so much join the team as appear from the void,” the website explains. “He spoke words of wisdom that inspired the other founders to start Attractive. It is believed that Poe’s home planet is one of deep serenity. Nobody knows what Poe is made of or how he moves, but he is adamant that he is here to help humanity reach a new plane of existence.”

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