May 27, 2019
Pros and Cons
- Training
- Account support
- Ease of use
- DIY tests
- Exit feedback tool.
- Clarification on the KPIs tracked on each experience.
- Impact of results of experiences ran simultaneously on the same pages.
- Social proof options.
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Pros and Cons
- Monetate cookie provides behavior's targets, and allows the business to provide a more relevant journey.
- The system is very user-friendly, meaning training someone new is quick and effective.
- Monetate support is always very helpful, and the account managers are keen to keep it up to date.
- A Monetate app would be great, as the mobile site is extremely hard to use.
- Matching the business product feed with the Monetate data has proven to be difficult.
- Targeting a whole categories PDP is very hard to do with Monetate, unless you have time to find the whole categories of product codes.
- Providing more Monetate training.
May 25, 2019
Pros and Cons
- Easy to use.
- Tests are easily customizable within the tool, through the html, css, and js boxes.
- An excellent support system, either through Monetate support or through our contact with the account managers.
- The analytics is known to be 5% invalid when compared to GA, especially monetary measurements.
- Provide more in-depth analysis for tests.
- The AI tool should be able to better recognize smaller differences.
Pros and Cons
- Adding promotional banners under the top nav across the site
- Testing and measuring a/b efforts like PDP revisions or similar updates
- hiding elements that may be hindering the customer experience as a hotfix
- documentation could be updated more regularly
- Training information and videos are very basic
- The overall organization can be improved
May 29, 2019
Pros and Cons
- Really strong account service team who are very knowledgeable, insightful and quick to respond.
- Platform is easy to use.
- Experiences can be created internally once you have received training.
- Still not 100% across the analytics/reporting component
- Would be great if we had a local team, given the differences in time zones
Pros and Cons
- Ability to get experiences immediately online.
- Ability to compare multiple metrics for A/B testing.
- Ability to duplicate experiences.
- Custom events are not easy to use and don't get copied while duplicating experiences.
- When opening different experiences/actions in different tabs, all tabs switch to the same action/experience
- Impossible to track custom event on added element (added through Test version) with Inspector before experience is actually live.
- Differences between experience types (Majority fit vs standard A/B etc is not very clear in the interface. Inexperienced users sometimes choose the wrong experience type as a consequence.
- Bounce rate sounds sometimes incorrect. The experiment has a bigger bounce rate 90% of the time.
- Lack metrics such as Exit rates and Median order value.
Pros and Cons
- AB Testing: ease of use & ability to access metrics/analytics
- Campaigns/Promotions: preview mode is especially helpful in identifying exactly what will show up
- Customer segmentation functionality would be great in identifying the different types of customers we have
- Other ways to organize/gather data to identify different perspectives
Pros and Cons
- Targeting. We get to target different branches across the UK and also we can target users whether they are logged in or not.
- Quick Win. Changing something as a reactive response is super easy with Monetate and saves us going into our CMS.
- Analytics. We can see our each of our events perform.
- In my opinion, the only thing I would change is finding the right blog/help guide to use.
May 22, 2019
Pros and Cons
- Ability to AB test very easily.
- Very flexible/customizable lightbox tool.
- Easy to target specific users by uploading datasets.
- Lightboxes that adjust for desktop vs. mobile experiences.
- Easier integration with custom analytics we use internally.
Pros and Cons
- Quick front end changes
- Traffic throttling
- Personalized journeys
- Making the server side easier to obtain
- Not made for complex dev
- Sometimes UI can be clunky
January 15, 2019
Pros and Cons
- It has great customer segmentation capability
- It allows to use html, css, and javascript to create promotions
- It has good analytical tools
- It is intuitive even for a novice
- Sometimes it is hard to find what you are looking for (for example, how to export data)
- The way of specifying pages on which promotion should be displayed could be improved
- It is hard to organize promotions
September 12, 2018
Pros and Cons
- You can test virtually ANYTHING on your website. Once you know what you're doing, it is really easy to upload assets and really customize the details of your test.
- If you have multiple websites, you can keep all of your website tests separate - for example, we manage two separate brands, both which have 3 environments we can set up tests in: development, staging, and production environments. So, we can easily manage 6 separate test groups and store the various content in the proper section, very easily.
- The design is really clean and easy to navigate. It is easy to organize and filter your experiments, you can tag them to make filtering a lot easier (especially when you have a bunch of experiments running at the same time), and the simple function of duplicating an experiment makes minor changes to a grand experiment SO much quicker.
- The Monetate Inspector tool (I could be using the wrong word, sorry!) also allows you to far more easily identify the unique ID of an experiment so you can find it in Monetate and make any desired changes rather than sifting one by one through your various experiments trying to figure out which one you mean to edit.
- The learning curve is a little steep, especially if you're unfamiliar with HTML/CSS. The tool is so powerful but can be overwhelming at first. The intro instructional videos/content is helpful but it doesn't cover everything. We needed to partner with an optimization company to better understand the tool and get started.
- Setting up an experiment for the first time isn't simple when you're a marketer who is inexperienced with any sort of web development or even just HTML/CSS. While you can easily select the area you want to create a test with, you don't have a way to easily manipulate that section without the use of HTML/CSS.
- The first optimization company Monetate recommended us to was horrible - it really was awful working with them. We had dedicated (paid for!) hours that got wasted after the company wasted our time in each meeting (when we did have one - they often needed to reschedule) and they barely knew what our company even did despite multiple meetings. Those hours, despite the awful experience, were never fulfilled, never reimbursed, never carried over to the new (and far better) company. This left a bad taste in my mouth. While I really like this product and it does everything we need, this awful experience and lack of ownership on their end was highly disappointing. We are moving forward though - and happy with our results.
December 20, 2018
Pros and Cons
- Supportive account team to help us use Monetate to the best of its capabilities
- Intuitive to use and learn
- Has a vast array of functionality options to maximise possibilities to test/personalise
- Monetate-built actions are often locked down so the client user cannot amend to be bespoke for their needs. Therefore any changes wanted require a new Monetate dev ticket. This can be time consuming
December 20, 2018
Pros and Cons
- Customer service - Their customer service is far better than any of their competitors that I've used in the past. I've had detailed coding help and suggestions to improve experiences within hours of lodging a support ticket.
- Intuitive interface - The action builder is so easy to use, even if you don't have a good grasp on HTML/CSS and makes it possible to get launch experiences quickly which is important in a retail environment where things are so changeable.
- Analytics - The speed at which detailed information comes in about whether an experience is performing is great and the level of detail makes it possible to provide business cases to key project stakeholders efficiently.
- Lack of ability to move experiences to another folder if you're on the main experience page - This has bugged me for ages because we do a lot of experience duplication for different campaigns every month and it would be easier if you could duplicate and move folders on the same page.
- Mass content upload. I may just be missing this feature somewhere but I've never been able to upload more than one piece of content at once and it's quite frustrating.
- More Manchester based events. This one is obviously specific to my location and I understand why London is the hub for events but it would be nice to have more frequent opportunities to liaise with other Monetate users locally.
Pros and Cons
- Display marketing messages
- Provide data
- A/B testing
- Custom customer segments
- Training videos
- Suppport chat
Pros and Cons
- Intuitive UI. I am fairly technical but discussing the product with others on my team, they all agree that it is very easy to use.
- Monetate has taken a complex idea like personalization and has turned it into a simple problem to solve by thinking who, what, when, etc. to each situation. This was a much more elegant way to approach the problem than other vendors.
- They have great support and seem to really care about your success, as well as have motivation to push you, the client, to get going and find success with the tool.
- In the pre-sales process, they really want to sell you billable hours. These hours do not transfer to the next calendar year and are not refundable. It is a poor system.
- Their technical documentation is confusing in spots and could be improved. We followed documentation, with an eyebrow raised in some cases, and then were told to go down a different path which was not listed in the documentation (but made more sense.)
- I can't speak to the success or not of the program, but we are currently working with a third party of Monetate (who Monetate put us in touch with, as part of our billable hours.) Its not a con per se, but feels weird.
July 28, 2017
Pros and Cons
- Easy to use interface.
- Seamless for the end user.
- SEO is not affected.
- Personalized site means greater retention and interest.
- Doesn't always work with active or JS controlled elements on the site.
- We use a lot of support hours to implement experiences.
December 20, 2018
Pros and Cons
- Our Monetate team is amazing! They taught us well, are quick to answer questions, and are very organized to keep us on track.
- Simple-to-use interface makes it easy for business users to set up experiences with little to no web dev assistance.
- We've gotten some great ideas out of the Insight reports our team has provided. Some of them we tested already, and others inspired even more ideas!
- We'd like to be able to use the Monetate resources to help us set up tests that require web dev (to get it out of our backlog), but they also have wait times similar to our internal ones. I realize resources are hard to come by, but this is an area we'd love to be able to utilize more if the turnaround were quicker.
- IE is always a problem. I know it's not Monetate-specific though, and many tools struggle with IE.
- We have a large percentage of our users who use IE, and I'd like to provide more experiences in IE without and additional hassle.
September 11, 2015
Pros and Cons
- The UI is intuitive. With very little training team members start using the tools.
- It is versatile - a testing, targeting, a second CMS, and recommendation engine which can be used virtually anywhere on the site.
- It is light. Integration is fast and does not slow down site speed. We even use Monetate to test certain 3P functionality, integrating through Monetate and testing the application to validate impact on site KPI rather than just integrating the 3P directly into the platform.
- Client Services team very proactive in helping our team identify opportunities and get quick results. Also very responsive when we need to use Monetate to quickly address issues affecting the business.
- Continuous improvement in predictive analytics.
September 01, 2015
Pros and Cons
- Monetate's testing tool is extremely user friendly, reliable and robust. The tool itself allows us to test content and functionality in 2-4 weeks where it would normally take months for our IT team to prioritize and build.
- Monetate's service is above and beyond. They assign each client a very knowledgeable and helpful client success manager who speaks with us weekly and answers emails daily when we have questions. They are proactive about testing suggestions and ideas and are extremely quick to respond to questions.
- I truly have no areas for improvement for Monetate.
December 23, 2015
Pros and Cons
- Ease of segmentation.
- Ease of action builder. You don't need to know how to code html or java to create most of your actions. Even novice users can make substantial changes.
- Support. The support that you get from your Client Success Managers make a big difference with the tool. You are not left to your own devices to figure out how best to accomplish a test. They make sure you are getting what you pay for.
- I know that it is recommended to give any test at least two weeks before considering any results, but I would like to see real time reporting.
Pros and Cons
- Dynamic test to let users test several different ideas at the same time while dynamically distributing traffic to the highest ROI.
- Live analytics to show us where the test is at and to easily compare the experiment with original (control).
- Faster development job is done when requested.
- I know the company has been undergoing a change but staff has changed so often that our personalized staff has changed numerous times.
December 21, 2018
Pros and Cons
- The reps are extremely timely in their responses and knowledgeable about the system.
- Monetate has a WYSIWYG system for making changes on web pages that is extremely easy to use.
- Reporting is clear and easy to share with others.
- Some DIV tags cannot be selected in ActionBuilder and there is no explanation in the interface as to why that is.
- The dataset upload tool errors out sometimes, but when you click "View Error", nothing happens.
- When using JavaScript in ActionBuilder, sometimes it continuously fires even after closing ActionBuilder and reopening it. For example, redirect Javascript entered in ActionBuilder fires as soon as ActionBuilder is opened to edit the action.
December 20, 2018
Pros and Cons
- Relatively easy user interface to use. We have separated our Monetetate hub by site - very easy to use.
- Building tests or experiences has a good builder addressing what you are building, where it is targeting, when the experience should run and why
- The majority fit setting provides a good low risk way of determining if a fix is a 'winner' or not
- A very helpful and extensive Knowledge Hub
- Searching through all the experiences or tests you put online is reliant on a very robust naming convention
- We would like an easier place for notes for each experience or test to be stored so that these are searchable. This allows things like project briefs to be summarised for the purpose of the wider team
- It would be great if Monetate had an improved preview function to allow you to view an experience on the device and screen resolution of your choice. Currently, to fully test your experiences, you'll need a few browser apps which allows you to mimic devices, clear cookies...
- A smarter way of building out variations for tests would be useful. Occasionally, a test that has a lot of different variables (but ultimately quite similar) will require you to setup multiple experiences to achieve this
Pros and Cons
- A/B testing functionality.
- Reporting analytics for A/B tests and experiences.
- Ability to provide product recommendations based upon site data, and feeding through a variety of algorithms.
- We have had some trouble getting some JavaScript elements to fire correctly. We ended up putting our static content in Monetate, and testing against the dynamic content on our site.
Monetate Scorecard Summary
What is Monetate?
Monetate is an ecommerce personalization software for consumer-facing brands. It is used by QVC, Newegg Inc., J. Crew Group Inc., The North Face, and hundreds of other retailers according to the vendor. Monetate enables brands to create individualized experiences for site visitors, with the goal of improving engagement and business performance.
The Monetate platform is open, designed to work seamlessly across the user's marketing stack. Monetate is real-time too, with machine learning capabilities to help deliver 1-to-1 personalization at scale.
In October 2019 Monetate was acquired by Kibo Software.
Categories: Ecommerce Personalization, A/B Testing
Monetate Videos (3)
Monetate Integrations
Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Intershop Commerce Suite, Tealium AudienceStream, HCL Commerce, SAP Commerce Cloud (formerly SAP Hybris), Oracle DMP, now part of Oracle CX Marketing, Magento Commerce Cloud (formerly Magento), Web Analytics Platforms, Demandware, Neustar Identity Data Management Platform (IDMP, PlatformOne)
Monetate Competitors
Monetate Pricing
- Does not have featureFree Trial Available?No
- Does not have featureFree or Freemium Version Available?No
- Has featurePremium Consulting/Integration Services Available?Yes
- Entry-level set up fee?Optional
Monetate Support Options
| Free Version | Paid Version | |
|---|---|---|
| FAQ/Knowledgebase | ||
| Video Tutorials / Webinar | ||
| Phone |
Monetate Technical Details
| Deployment Types: | SaaS |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems: | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application: | No |
| Supported Languages: | English |