SiteSpect Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 8 out of 10

Score

8 out of 10

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for SiteSpect are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

SiteSpect is widely used as a primary A/B and MVT tool by various companies, including Digital & Wise and Expedia/Hotels.com. Companies choose SiteSpect for its robustness and flexibility compared to other testing tools. It has been used concurrently with other testing solutions, proving its reliability. The IT group primarily administers the tool, while the Marketing Department defines the tests and target campaigns.

Digital & Wise leverages SiteSpect's Conversion Rate Optimization Services to support their clients. The platform offers a fully managed testing service, allowing clients to take A/B and Multivariate testing seriously and build strong testing cultures within their business. SiteSpect is promoted as the right tool for the job due to its testing and targeting capabilities and quick deployment time.

In a Fortune 50 e-Commerce environment, SiteSpect is used to optimize sales and enhance the guest experience on web and mobile sites. Users value SiteSpect for its ability to alter code on the front-end before rendering, eliminating flickering or flashing caused by JavaScript changes. The tool also enables rapid implementation of hotfixes across entire websites. Expedia/Hotels.com has been using SiteSpect for three years and considers it the most powerful testing tool on the market.

Overall, SiteSpect has proven to be a versatile and reliable solution for companies looking to improve their digital experiences, optimize conversions, and implement fast fixes across their websites.

Reviews

9 Reviews

SiteSpect: A Robust Testing Platform and a Must for Flicker-Free Performance

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

March 24, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use SiteSpect as our primary A/B and MVT tool. It is primarily administered by our IT group, but the tests and target campaigns we drive with the tool are defined by the Marketing Department. We adopted SiteSpect initially because it seemed like the most robust and flexible testing tool of the competitors we considered. It's continued to be a reliable tool, and we've even used it concurrently with other testing solutions.

Pros

One of the primary reasons we selected SiteSpect was the fact that the experience is flicker-free. From that standpoint, it is still more capable than any platform we've seen demonstrated.
SiteSpect is very useful to run "target" type campaigns. For our purposes, we can quickly deploy changes that would require more lengthy core development times.
SiteSpect's support is top notch, and the tool is so robust that almost any testing scenario can be realized.

Cons

We've never been able to reconcile SiteSpect's analytics with our own, so the value of that offering is completely lost on us.
SiteSpect isn't a business user friendly tool. We use either front-end or full-stack developers to build and deploy our tests. Without some front-end dev knowledge, a marketer would probably find SiteSpect intimidating or difficult to use.
While SiteSpect is truly flicker-free, the functionality comes at the expense of an extra hop for our website visitors. This can add latency and complicate troubleshooting efforts.

Likelihood to Recommend

SiteSpect is great for businesses with available development resources and a need to provide flicker-free performance. Additionally, the month-to-month service model is attractive considering the contract and implementation prices of most of the tool's competitors. If an organization wants to run a lot of tests with a small team of marketers, I wouldn't recommend a tool as complex as SiteSpect. Effective use of the tool requires a lot of technical skill.

William Van Fleet

Manager II, Digital Commerce Operations in Marketing at 1-800 CONTACTS (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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SiteSpect A/B testing platform - compared to Optimizely and Visual Website Optimizer

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

March 1, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Sitespect is an interesting platform. It is based and utilized for A/B testing purposes mainly. One of the major reasons to choose a tool like SiteSpect is the fact that it is not only client-side or front-facing and has the ability to alter the code being rendered on the front-end before it actually gets to the front-end meaning that you do not get the frustrating flicker or flash from code being changed by JavaScript after render. However it does also have some other unusual perks, it can be used to rapidly implement a hotfix across an entire website.

Pros

It is able to intercept the code from your server, inject your code and then it continues on to the end-user's computer with virtually no speed interruptions.
It has several different options for performing A/B tests from regular factors to client-side factors, and origin experiments.
It is extremely flexible and configurable for the needs of your company or organization.

Cons

SiteSpect has a number of areas that are a bit difficult for users to understand, the main one being traffic allocation. Without getting into a long example the basic fact is that if you have 10 experiments running, it is very possible to have a very difficult time understanding how much traffic is going to each test, which is obviously not ideal for A/B testing. This problem is being addressed and hopefully will be fixed before 2017.
SiteSpect is very powerful, and it does have a GUI interface to help you make simple changes to your website, however to really use it to its potential, you will need developers who are comfortable with advanced CSS and JavaScript to use it.
The workflow of setting up experiments in Sitespect is also a little counter-intuitive. This is being addressed and fixed, but as it sits currently it does take some getting used to.

Likelihood to Recommend

SiteSpect is kind of the difference between the space shuttle and a bicycle. They will both get you places. However Sitespect is considerably more complex and more configurable than most other options that I have seen and used (Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer, etc.). But those other solutions also have a much lower learning curve and [users] are able to do a lot of things with relatively no coding experience or skill, where SiteSpect really does need capable developers to be utilized well.

Jonathan Hodak

Senior javascript developer in Corporate at Target (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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SiteSpect use in a large e-Commerce environment

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

July 7, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I was responsible for the implementation and use of SiteSpect in a Fortune 50 e-Commerce environment. It was used across web and mobile sites for A/B and multivariate testing to help optimize sales and the guest experience. SiteSpect allows you to monetize your analytics with a minimum of development effort.

Pros

SiteSpect's architecture is superior to other optimization tools because it eliminates the need for post-render calls to overwrite default site content. That means you don't have to worry about a flickering effect.
Because SiteSpect listens to http traffic and modifies the requested page on the fly, it is very easy to instrument tests on your site. You don't have to modify the production version of your code.
SiteSpect's origin experiment capabilities allow you to test and optimize server-side application code. This feature is extremely valuable for optimizing applications such as checkout on an e-commerce site.

Cons

SiteSpect recently came out with a feature to test and optimize mobile applications. I have not used this, but it fills an important capability gap with the product I was using at the time.

Likelihood to Recommend

I had a great experience with both the technical aspects of SiteSpect as well as the high level of support that I received from the company. One of the reasons we had such good success and were able to scale our testing efforts was having an IT architect involved as a close partner. I recommend involving an architect in the selection process to ensure your organization has a good understanding of how SiteSpect integrates with your site and any 3rd-party products such as Akamai.

Bobby Patterson

at Optimetrum LLC (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

D&W provide MVT services using SiteSpect, the choice of experts

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 20, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have been using SiteSpect for a number of years now at Digital & Wise. The SiteSpect platform is part of our Conversion Rate Optimisation Services. The product continues to help us support our clients. We offer a fully managed testing service on the SiteSpect platform, our clients take A/B and Multivariate testing seriously and have built strong testing cultures within their business, and we promote SiteSpect as the right tool for the job. It's testing and targeting capabilities and time to deployment are unmatched by another other tool on the market in our view.

If you're looking for a tool that is designed to help bring in significant insight and revenue to your business through testing, look no further.

Pros

Segmentation & Targeting
Analysis & Reporting
Non Intrusive testing, no lines of code needed in the core deployment.
Ability to test EVERYTHING!

Cons

User Interface - But it's always improving

Likelihood to Recommend

SiteSpect is very well suited when you have a number of systems working to compile your end page, eg. A CMS, Ecommerce engine and Image server etc. SiteSpect just looks at the HTML code! Simple. SiteSpect is less appropriate for sites with low traffic volumes, or if you are interested in one off tests. This is a testing tool for continuous improvements as part of your digital strategy.

George Ioannou

Founder, Head of Agency at Digital & Wise (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

6 years of experience

Sitespect - The Best tool in the business!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

April 2, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have used SiteSpect at Expedia/Hotels.com for 3 years previous to joining Accenture Digital. I was using SiteSpect primarily as an optimisation tool for hotels.com. I was helping to manage the testing process from end to end with massive amounts of hands on experience with SiteSpect. SiteSpect is the most powerful testing tool on the market.

Pros

Speed development
Integration with analytics tools
Request header alteration
Hosting of content
Bug patching

Cons

Reporting Interface could be better, but its still good compared to other tools out there.

Likelihood to Recommend

Best product in the market in my opinion.

Verified User

Analyst (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

SiteSpect - Testing made easy

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

August 20, 2013

Pros

You can quickly run test campaigns of content and promotions – without burdening valuable IT resources, and without the need for JavaScript tags, code changes, or JavaScript that slow your ability to test, and decrease your site’s speed.

Cons

It's not designed for a marketer to create, implement and execute tests. You need strong technical resources to help implement the tests using the platform.

Likelihood to Recommend

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Sitespect - powerful testing and analytics

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

August 7, 2013

Pros

Sitespect is a great AB and multivariate testing tool. It is particularly valuable as a non-Javascript solution. Setting up tests can be done in minutes without IT involvement.

Cons

One current limitation of Sitespect is that the data it captures is numeric. For example, it will not capture a department name variable such as supplements. The workaround is that a user can create a supplement department value capture that fires as 0 or 1. For companies with very large numbers of departments the workaround can be a time consuming process.

Likelihood to Recommend

Verified User

Vice-President in Marketing (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

SiteSpect

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

July 30, 2013

Pros

If we have a production bug, we can release the temporary fix without a build, provided the bug is a front-end related.
We can test multiple modules in a single campaign (or A/B test).
We can control the traffic flow and designate who will be eligible for the test and who will be not.

Cons

We have not been using the product long enough to understand any potential shortcomings.

Likelihood to Recommend

avinash cipalli

Web Developer - Consultant in Marketing at Intuit (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

0.7 years of experience

Powerful and versatile... only if you're a programmer

Rating: 3 out of 10

Incentivized

July 24, 2013

Pros

Used for A/B and multi-variate testing via regex substitutions directly into the website source code.
Great for programmers and those well-versed in regex, HTML, and JavaScript.

Cons

Not as friendly to those without programmer coding expertise.
Analytics require more of a learning curve to interpret.
Tech-support and customer support are more left to in-company representatives than at SiteSpect themselves.

Likelihood to Recommend

Great for programmers involved in A/B and multivariate site testing. But too cumbersome and esoteric for anyone else.

Vince Ginsburg

UI Analyst in Information Technology at Corsair Media Services (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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Reviews and Ratings

SiteSpect A/B testing platform - compared to Optimizely and Visual Website Optimizer

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

March 1, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

It is able to intercept the code from your server, inject your code and then it continues on to the end-user's computer with virtually no speed interruptions.
It has several different options for performing A/B tests from regular factors to client-side factors, and origin experiments.
It is extremely flexible and configurable for the needs of your company or organization.

Cons

SiteSpect has a number of areas that are a bit difficult for users to understand, the main one being traffic allocation. Without getting into a long example the basic fact is that if you have 10 experiments running, it is very possible to have a very difficult time understanding how much traffic is going to each test, which is obviously not ideal for A/B testing. This problem is being addressed and hopefully will be fixed before 2017.
SiteSpect is very powerful, and it does have a GUI interface to help you make simple changes to your website, however to really use it to its potential, you will need developers who are comfortable with advanced CSS and JavaScript to use it.
The workflow of setting up experiments in Sitespect is also a little counter-intuitive. This is being addressed and fixed, but as it sits currently it does take some getting used to.

Likelihood to Recommend

Jonathan Hodak

Senior javascript developer in Corporate at Target (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile