Software ratings site TrustRadius released its buying guide to A/B testing platforms today, with software recommendations for small, midsize and enterprise level companies.
TrustRadius ranked the platforms based on user ratings on its site as well as adoption within each market segment.
The biggest surprise of the report was in the enterprise segment (companies with over 500 employees.) Adobe Target, (which was declared a leader in testing platforms back in February 2013) found itself ranked lower than Monetate and Maxymiser. Although recognized for its robustness as a testing tool, and integration with Adobe Analytics, Target received a few low scores due to its high cost, difficulty in training, and the amount of IT resources it uses up. As a result, Adobe missed out on a “Leader” or even a “Strong Performer” categorization in this report.
Monetate and UK-based Maxymiser were the leaders in the enterprise category, with Monetate especially receiving high marks for its easy-to-use interface, great customer support and the ability to personalize content and target specific customers based on a wide variety of variables. Despite its focus on enterprise clients, Monetate received “Strong Performer” ratings in the small and midsize company segments as well.
“The introduction of low-cost and easy-to-use tools and growing awareness of potential ROI has increased the practice of testing amongst marketers” says Vinay Bhagat, CEO of TrustRadius. “Pure-play testing vendors such as Monetate, Maxymiser, SiteSpect, Optimizely and Visual Website Optimizer are besting traditional vendors.”
For midsize companies (51-500 employees,) San Francisco-based Optimizely took the leader spot, with customers giving it high marks for being easy to set up, use and understand results. However, Optimizely did have some restrictions in terms of the complexity of targeting, higher volume of visitors and measuring goals outside of clicks and impressions.
Finally, for small companies ( less than 50 employees) the top tool was Unbounce, which isn’t a pure testing platform so much as it is a landing page builder, with testing capabilities. However, that’s enough to get the job done for most small companies that are looking for simple solutions to start off with.
Another interesting observation is the relatively low ratings for Google Analytic’s free Content Experiments testing tool. You would think that a free platform for testing would have higher rates of market penetration, but Bhagat says this isn’t necessarily the case. “Google Content Experiments isn’t a very robust feature, it doesn’t offer multivariate testing and is not as highly rated by customers,” says Bhagat. “The presence of some very affordable and effective solutions such as Optimizely and VWO means that the ‘free’ option of Google Analytics is less attractive.”
TrustRadius’ free buying guide to A/B testing platforms can be downloaded from here. And here’s an accompanying infographic to illustrate the platform ratings for all three market segments.
