Chartbeat vs. Google Content Experiments (discontinued)

The main point of benefit is the realtime data. This is vital to our team as we are publishing a lot of content per day, so we have a busy homepage to manage and it's important to know which content is performing well. We also like to get an understanding as quickly as possible - which Chartbeat offers - of where traffic is coming from. Often we will see an example where a page is getting high traffic from Google, for example, and we know that might not need to be placed so prominently on the homepage because the traffic is arriving to us externally anyway. Without that depth of understanding what is performing best and why - updated immediately, unlike in Google Analytics now - our homepage would not be as well optimised for users coming to us direct

Incentivized

Do you already have Google Analytics? If so content experiments is a good, free, starting point to dip your toes in A/B testing. Do you need to run Multivariate experiments? If so, Google Content Experiments is not going to fit your needs.

Incentivized

• Provides easy at-a-glance look at what people are reading right now
• Heads-up Display allows you to make sure the homepage is showing the content people want to read
• Headline testing tool provides fascinating insight into what makes people read a story and improves headline-writing ability

• Quick and easy to create and set up experiments
• Results are presented in a way that is familiar and easy for any Google Analytics user to understand. So is great for beginners to conversion testing
• Already integrated into Google Analytics and can measure results against your existing conversion goals
• Allows nine possible variants to be A/B tested
• Features more than one testing methodology, Bayesian (Multi-Armed Bandit,) and Full Factorial
• Allows the user to select one of three possible confidence thresholds to ensure that experiment results are robust
• Great value, it is free!

• Source of traffic needs improvement. Search and social make sense, but "internal" and "links" is a grey area. It would be helpful to define those with an organization and provide an information icon so users can easily remember what each of those buckets is tracking.
• More ways to customize the real-time board. For example, with video content, that's great that I can see a user has started a video, but what is the completion rate, was that only on O&O or can that track Facebook, too?
• Would like to see demo (age) information included as a way to slice the data so I can see what's working with my older and younger demo.

Incentivized

• Their documentation is not the best and it's quite a steep learning curve.
• They also don't tell you particularly well what sorts of things you should be testing.
• Compared to other suppliers of A/B testing tools- it needs a simpler interface. Optimize is starting to answer that - but is still quite Beta-like.

Incentivized

I gave Chartbeat a 5 for a renewal rating, because, while it delivers clear and understandable content, Google Analytics also provides many of the same features for free. For a small to medium website, I believe it would be more cost effective to use Google Analytics. A website with a high amount of traffic, however, could merit spending the money on Chartbeat to maximize their potential.

Content Experiments just makes it is simple and easy to implement A|B tests. We will be evaluating other tools in search of a more robust system for multivariate and cross-page testing, such as Optimizely or Visual Website Optimizer. However, for basic testing, you can't really beat it.

I am able to "set it and forget it," keeping it up on my monitor for either constant checking or just keeping an eye on the numbers during the day. I'm also able to keep track of what times are perfect to post a story and which stories rack up the most traffic.

Incentivized

I have had limited experience of support for Chartbeat but whenever I have needed help it has been there. Recently there was an issue of seeing different forms of data in real time - app and otherwise effectively, and the issue was being clearly dealt with and communicated back to us.

Incentivized

Using the free tool, overall "live support" is limited. However, there are plenty of online resources to get started. If you need handheld support, it is best to upgrade the service or hire a developer through one of Google's partner agencies. There could be more support for understanding what makes a test useful or not.

Incentivized

Omnilytics is more robust, detailed, and catered for an intermediate media user, while I think Chartbeat is a more user-friendly and beginner-oriented piece of technology. That being said, there is an impressive amount of lift for Chartbeat, and it's evident that simplicity is the key to using a software daily (which is absolutely the point in the content world).

Incentivized

Google Website Optimizer was a better product but has been discontinued. We have also used Test and Target , which has more features but we have been doing fine with Google Content Experiments. Most testing situations can be handled with Google Content Experiments.

Incentivized

• It has helped us save time in report generation and performance analysis.
• By helping us evaluate our contributors, we're able to get our money's worth.
• Seeing our numbers on the Big Board fosters healthy competition among brands, motivating us to distribute our stories better.

Incentivized

• CE has made efficient time use easy and fool-proof when it comes to learning the software
• Because it integrates with other Google programs there is a benefit to track with Google Analytics
• The learning curve can create initiate time investment that may go beyond what companies are willing to dedicate.