Adobe Dynamic Tag Management (DTM) was a tool used by marketers to manage tags, and for collecting and distributing data across digital marketing systems. Adobe DTM is a legacy, and it will not receive feature updates. Adobe invites users to upgrade to Launch on the Adobe Experience Platform.
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Optimizely Web Experimentation
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Optimizely Web Experimentation empowers teams to conduct experiments (without having to rely on developer resources) in order to test various user interactions, make website changes backed by data, and personalize customer experiences.
If you're on the Adobe stack at all, you absolutely need DTM. It will make your life infinitely easier. It's so simple to update your Adobe Analytics code and have version control, and when we implemented Adobe Target, it took literally less than 15 minutes for me to do. I also think it's significantly simpler than Google Tag Manager. I went through all manner of difficulty when implementing tags on that and have not had similar problems on DTM. If you're frequently placing pixels, it's a great tool that will speed their deployment. The only situation in which I think a tag manager is not appropriate is if you have a dev with too much time on their hands. Otherwise, get a TMS and get DTM.
This is our second testing platform, and is by far the best we have leveraged. Its intuitive in how you are able to build tests. Tracking is easy to set up within the visual editor or as a capability in URL tracking. The reporting tab does need more filtering capabilities for custom metrics.
It is a rules based tag management system that allows the application of tracking pixels much easier than hard coding.
By placing 2 pieces of code on the top and bottom of each page of a website, we can create rules that track certain events and relay the information back to Adobe Media Optimizer and Google analytics.
It has simplified the coding process so one doesn't have to generate tons of gory javascript to deploy on each individual page to get tracking.
Hard to use extensions without some knowledge of HTML/CSS
Inconsistent user counts between GA & Optimizely when it comes to calculating MAUs, hard to be able to forecast budget and overages when our source of truth (GA) differs from our testing platform (Optimizely)
Impressions model doesn't support scaling personalization experiences - hard to run a serious data driven testing program when you have to cut tests short before 14 days (ideal length to get to any statistical read) in order to save on impressions
Because it's an incredible and essential tool for my line of work as a conversion optimization specialist. Really couldn't do my job nearly as effectively without it. It's paid for itself many times over and I feel like I'm only beginning to unlock the tools potential.
Usability is mostly great. I like the WYSIWYG functionality and adding in real code is simple as well. It's easy to target specific pages or audiences. I've knocked a couple of points off because of how difficult it is to set up URL redirect experiments, confusion around creating pages, and lack of data that can be further analyzed.
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's availability as a 10 out of 10. The software is reliable and does not experience any application errors or unplanned outages. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's performance as a 9 out of 10. Pages load quickly, reports are complete in a reasonable time frame, and the software does not slow down any other software or systems that it integrates with. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
Although it is a newer product to Adobe, they seem to truly care about our challenges and are very proactive in making sure that we have the most knowledgeable support available in a timely manner.
They always are quick to respond, and are so friendly and helpful. They always answer the phone right away. And [they are] always willing to not only help you with your problem, but if you need ideas they have suggestions as well.
The tool itself is not very difficult to use so training was not very useful in my opinion. It did not also account for success events more complex than a click (which my company being ecommerce is looking to examine more than a mere click).
In retrospect: - I think I should have stressed more demo's / workshopping with the Optimizely team at the start. I felt too confident during demo stages, and when came time to actually start, I was a bit lost. (The answer is likely I should have had them on-hand for our first install.. they offered but I thought I was OK.) - Really getting an understanding / asking them prior to install of how to make it really work for checkout pages / one that uses dynamic content or user interaction to determine what the UI does. Could have saved some time by addressing this at the beginning, as some things we needed to create on our site for Optimizely to "use" as a trigger for the variation test. - Having a number of planned/hoped-for tests already in-hand before working with Optimizely team. Sharing those thoughts with them would likely have started conversations on additional things we needed to do to make them work (rather than figuring that out during the actual builds). Since I had development time available, I could have added more things to the baseline installation since my developers were already "looking under the hood" of the site.
Adobe DTM provides a more secure data analytics solution. It is customized and best used on large scale deployments of websites with pages 10,000+. The Adobe Analytics tool, once learned, is very easy to use and provides more robust, customized graphics and ability to export data to "securely" via FTP from the cloud to SQL database.
Overall, the tools we compared against were great, but we went with Optimizely because it has all the features we needed and has the market leadership that gave us trust we would be successful in our experimentation efforts.
While granted, I am not the one making the changes to deploy the software; it seems basically as simple as placing the optimized snippet on your site. If you place it in the header, it should reach across your entire site easily. I do think the test setup can be a bit temperamental at times, and having too many cooks in the kitchen can lead to errors. So, I would caution how many people have the access needed to make actual changes.
The key factor is that my devs are not tied up with petty things like adding JS or advertising pixels. Simple work like that can be handled by me while they work on feature development.
Release cycle is much shorter when a dev is needed, say for a direct call rule that involves JS being written. We don't have to go through the normal release cycle and can do it on an ad hoc basis without all the rigmarole of a hot fix.
Customer retention: We've reduced subscription service client churn by 20%+ using optimized unsubscribe flows.
Risk mitigation: Testing into full site redesigns has saved clients millions of dollars.
Feature prioritization: Identifying what painted door changes add value has allowed developers to focus on changes that add hundreds of thousands or even millions to the bottom line.
