Google Tag Manager vs. Kameleoon vs. Webtrends Optimize

I have found Google Tag Manager as the go to solution for managing all of your event and conversion tags for your website. Not only does it make it easy to manage all of your tags in the one place, it is fairly intuitive to use and there is plenty of videos and help documentation online to help set up what ever you need. No scenarios come to mind at the moment on where it is less appropriate to use.

Incentivized

There are many platforms to choose from when it comes to experimentation and personalization. We've found Kameleoon to be an excellent choice for those looking for a balance in capabilities (it checks all the boxes), cost-effectiveness, and a helpful customer success team paired with a responsive product team.

Incentivized

Webtrends optimize is a marketing solution aimed squarely at transactional and eCom based websites. I would only recommend a colleague to engage with the solution once the marketing dept is at a point where their website is fully optimized in regards to SEO and all the other fundamentals in order to truly build upon what Webtrends can offer. This shows you an easier way of measuring your ROI and the money you will invest with the tool-moving forward.

Incentivized

• Selecting elements on a site [object, class, cookie, etc] (to later fire an event, send some data, etc) is very easy with triggers. Want to add an event when someone clicks on a button? Super easy. It was many many DOM selectors and you can even add custom functions if you need to do something more specific
• In general, firing events in different circumstances is very easy mixing triggers and tags. You can track almost any element of the DOM and do whatever you want with it.
• Testing is a great functionality. Only you can see what's on the site and you can debug it easily by seeing which events or tags were triggered and all the DOM elements involved (and why they matched the trigger).
• Working in environments (staging, production) and versioning is easy to do, deploying changes in 2 clicks.

Incentivized

• Widget editor (creating a widget without any code)
• Results analysis dashboard (easy to read and understand)
• The consulting team (always available to help and guide us - Thank you [C...] !!)
• Segmentation (it allows us to easily target a specific audience)
• The tool is very intuitive and easy to use

• Intuitive test set-up makes for a low learning curve.
• Ability to create custom data tables which enable exporting of visitor level data for more in-depth analysis outside of the Webtrends Optimize platform.
• Visual Editor WYSIWYG interface enables non-technical users to easily execute basic tests.

• There are several good integrations, but there can always be more. Native tracking for call tracking solutions, analytics providers, non-Google advertisers would be top of my list.
• Documentation is just dreadful. Luckily there are some awesome folks out there doing crowdsourced tutorials (shout out to Simo Ahava) but by and large the Google Tag Manager instructions are worth what you pay for them.

Incentivized

• Interface of the graphics editor is quite conceptual. It is fine after a few days but it takes a little while to recognize some icons.
• Their online tutorial could also be easily improved.
• If you want to do major graphical changes on your website, you will have to inject JS and CSS code which requires some technical background but I don’t know if that point can be improved.

• The cost is a factor. When you're trying to save money, particularly as a startup (a lot of our clients are up-and-comers) it has to be seen as an investment...but the cost to implement the system is fairly large.
• There's a bit of a steep learning curve, you can't just dive into the program.
• It's not impossible but it's not as easy as snapping your fingers to easily implement the program cross-platform.

Incentivized

I haven't found another option for us to use especially one that is free. Down the road we may go a different route but for now GTM is a good option and does what we need it to do. It'd be nice to get more support or more integrations but with the free version there's only so much one can expect to get I suppose.

Incentivized

already renewed :)

Difficulty was getting business units to take the time and spend the money to test, and then implement, best options.

No difficult obstacle to overcome but Google Tag Manager can still be difficult for many users to deploy. Sure the basic HTML script can be deployed quite easily, but when you start to require triggers, variables, etc, it can be a little daunting.

Incentivized

Kameleoon offers one of the best UI's I've seen when I've compared it to 4 of the other big competitors in the landscape. They have some improvement areas when it comes to the UX - Which is easily solvable if/when prioritized. There's a little to much "clicking" and "new tabs" in my opinion

Set up of basic tests that do not use segmentation or targeting is an intuitive experience that can be learned quickly by new users. However, as the need for segmentation and other more advanced capabilities arise, the experience begins to degrade.

zero complaints. I'm not aware of it ever failing.

Zero complaints. It seemed to do its job quickly and accurately.

GTM does not provide support. This is one of GTM's biggest issues but it's due to the level of customization for each website. If your team thinks they would heavily rely on the need for a support staff it is probably better to invest in a paid service with a team that can support your needs.

Incentivized

We have a very good relationship with our CSM and with Kameleoon’s technical team. We trust them fully to help us with the set-up of A/B tests and personalizations, analysis of results, and any technical matter that we may encounter. They always do their best to be as responsive as possible, and our communications are always very fluid.

The support from the team at Webtrends Optimize is unparalleled. There is always someone to consult should there be any issues.

I thought there was a little bit too much emphasis on AdWords stuff, not enough on the generic application of GTM.

Online training was ok. Because every test is a custom test, there's only so much that can be covered in a generic lesson.

Planning and communication will help greatly with an in-house implementation. If there are large teams, try to limit the number of people involved to 1-2 developers (back-end dev may be necessary depending on your platform), one analytics marketer and one project manager.

Incentivized

Implementation was pretty straightforward

We moved to GTM from a standard Google Analytics implementation. GTM is much more flexible and easier to make changes, especially as the changes relate to multiple sites and environments. While there is a learning curve when figuring out how to use GTM, I believe the change has been worth it because it helps us understand at a more fundamental level how our tracking works and gives us a lot more control over what we track and how.

Incentivized

We were looking for a new tool after Google sunset their tool. We tested AB Tasty and Kameleoon. Our dev team was unhappy with the weight of the AB Tasty tag and I found the level of service with Kameleoon much higher.

Webtrends Optimize can be used for much more complex tests, allows better conversion tracking and data collection. Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) is suitable for smaller, simple projects. Webtrends Optimize comes with an excellent consultancy that could save you a lot of time and resources

• GTM is very useful to determine if a particular element on the site is useful (i.e. is it being watched, is it being clicked, does it help customers navigate through more pages). As an SEO person, I can use this information to decide what to optimize for but also to track progress and see improvements in engagement.
• With the use of Google Tag Manager, I was able to easily inject an A/B testing tool which lead to several improvements in lead generation.

Incentivized

• Since we started using Kameleoon, our ROI indicators are all green. Truth is, we rely on exigent customers. If they’re not happy with our service, we will pay for it on the long term. Kameleoon helps us making sure this is not happening by providing us the tools to continuously improve our customers’ experiences.

Incentivized

• So far we haven't seen an ROI that we can accurately measure due to only running a couple of tests that haven't resulted in direct, site wide changes. However, we have learnt a lot about how to set up the right processes and documentation.