Zarget: A Review of a Conversion Rate Optimization Tool

Investing in the right conversion optimization tool is a big decision. But what is the right tool for your company? 3 things are important: your CRO strategy, your budget and the tool’s feature list. This set of features is an important point because it will enable you to put your CRO strategy into practise.

Editorial note: Zarget has been acquired by Freshworks in 2017 and is since then rebranded as Freshmarketer. What follows is the original article.

Meet Zarget, a conversion rate optimization tool specialised in A/B testing. Time to give you the review!

The main features of Zarget

A/B Testing and Split URL Testing

The main feature is A/B and split URL testing. Let’s start with the first one. Setting A/B tests couldn’t be any easier. First you need to fill out the URL, which will be used to configure your A/B test. Changes can be made with the Visual editor, the HTML editor, the style editor and the JS editor. We will talk about those later on in more depth. Once you have created all necessary test variations, it’s time to set the goals.

You have various options to set the goal of your A/B test:

• Track clicks on elements
• Track clicks on links
• Track page visits
• Track engagement
• Track form submits
• Track revenue
• Or create your custom event goal

Next thing up is targeting. Zarget has introduced several default options, such as all, by device type, referrals, new or returning visitors or even region. On top of that, you can define your custom audience. What about integrating your personas?

You can also generate heatmaps for every variation of an A/B test separately. We’ll come back to that as well, don’t worry.

Everything set? Time to launch your experiment. It’s that simple.

So is everything perfect? Not really. There are some little hiccups. For example, when testing an element that is visible throughout the entire website (such as the header, footer or sidebar), you can not test anything else. The reason is that, according to Zarget, two running A/B tests crossing each other might interfere with each other. This could lead to wrong A/B test results. Fortunately, they have a workaround for that: custom URL targeting.

Setting up an URL split test is pretty straight forward as well. You need to fill out the different URL’s, including the original, define the goals, set the targeting and you’re good to go!

Heat- and scroll maps

Heat maps and scroll maps are available as well. You have the option to start tracking a specific URL, but as said before, they’re generated for every A/B or Split URL test variation. This last option is done by default but you can switch it off if you prefer.

Starting a new heat -and scrollmap is very simple as well. Set the experiment URL and you’re good to go.

Zarget has thought about the little details as well. You can write down your hypothesis, so every one using the tool knows exactly what the A/B test is about. It seems trivial, but from my experience a lot of A/B tests are ran without any thoughts behind it. A second nice touch is that you can schedule your experiments. This means that your A/B test will automatically pause if the scheduled date or visitor limit has reached.

The maps shows the amount of visitors, the amount of clicks and since when it’s been tracking the clicks. You can easily change the device view (desktop, tablet or mobile for both portrait as landscape mode), consolidate reports and change the date range. The accuracy of those clicks is spot on!

You have several options to access the maps: through Zarget’s website itself, by a key shortcut (CTRL+Shift+H) directly on your page or by using their Chrome extension. I will talk about that in a little while.

Funnel Analysis

With funnel analysis you can find out where your visitors drop-off in a series of pages. It’s an effective way to calculate the conversion rate on specific user behavior. Again, setting up is easy. All you need to do is to specify the target URL’s. You can also track virtual page views.

Additional features

Custom URL Targeting

When defining the URL for an experiment or heat map, you have several options: simple match, exact match, regex or substring. You can choose to include or exclude a certain URL. Should the experiment run on multiple pages, no problem, just add another URL.

Remember the little hiccup I talked about when running various experiments on the same page? Just exclude the necessary URL’s and you’re ready to go. The four options should give you enough flexibility.

IP filtering

IP filtering is a pretty common feature and has been integrated into Zarget as well. You can exclude certain IP’s from tracking data from all experiments by entering a range of IP addresses or regular expressions. On top of that, they included a “Include my Current IP address” button. Pretty slick!

Google Analytics integration

As we all know, data is the driving power behind CRO. Zarget thought about that as well. Connecting your Google Analytics account with your A/B tests is done with a flick of a finger and the click of a mouse!

The editors

Zarget has several editors for you to work with. Depending the complexity of your A/B test and your skills, you can choose which editor (or combination) you would like to use. You have the visual or WYSIWYG editor, an HTML editor, a CSS editor and a JS editor.

There is one little issue in the CSS editor. At the moment you can’t edit your general CSS file. For example, one of our articles has several CTA’s integrated. Instead of just changing the class of that button once, you need to change them all one by one. Having twenty or so buttons on that page, it does take quiet some time. Just one small remark and I’ve heard that Zarget is already looking for a solution!

Other things to mention

Chrome extension

Zarget is providing Google Chrome users an extension, making it incredibly easy to set up and run A/B tests. Cameron Henneke, co-founder of Etsy, said that this extension was the best thing that happened to his company. They test more and iterate faster and that’s what optimising is all about.

You can use the Chrome extension to generate the heat -and scroll map. You can also consult the results of running experiments for the page you’re visiting.

Implementation

Zarget recommends to integrate the necessary JS code synchronously, meaning on top of the <head> tag. The reason is that this reduces the “Flash of Original Content” (FOOC), or the white white flickering of the page. Google Tag Manager is supported as well, but this will load the JS asynchronously, meaning that the flickering is more noticeable.

Pricing

They offer two plans: the standard (starting at $15) and the professional (starting at $35) plan. The standard option includes things like the heat -and scroll map, the funnel analysis, real-time reporting and unlimited amount of domains and experiments. The professional plan includes everything of the standard one and adds A/B testing, split URL testing and Google Analytics integration to the basket.

Although they have a starting price for every plan, you can extend it with the amount of visitors you would like to track. Whichever plan you choose, you’ll have 30 days to try it out for free!

Conclusion

I have been testing Zarget now for several weeks, trying out all its features. One of the first things that really hit me was its ease of use. Experiments, full funnel tracking and setting up the most important heat maps are done in no time. The reporting is really straight forward without any unnecessary details.

The Google Chrome extension and the key shortcut is a very nice touch as well and works without any hassle.

Some of its competitors may have more features up their sleeve, but my experience is that they tend to add complexity as well. Zarget just makes it happen.

A special reduction

Zarget is giving our readers a special reduction of 10% on all plans. When signing up, use the following promotional code: ZB-OFFER

 

This is a sponsored post. Although we’ve received payment for this review, it reflects our true experience with the tool.