Optimizely Web Experimentation vs. SessionCam (discontinued)

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.

Incentivized

SessionCam works well for helping you figure out what is and isn't working with a small or mid-sized business website. It can give you valuable insights regarding the flow of the user's movements on the site, and where the user might hit a dead end. Its reporting capabilities might not be powerful enough for more complex situations.

Incentivized

• Considers every kind of experiment from simple code change, code additions, code removal, javascript functions, CSS changes, and split landing redirects.
• Very friendly UC interface for easy navigation of implementation of pages, click events, experiment set up, and metric set up.
• The ability to let me know when something has reach stat sig without having to do complicated math on my own
• ability to carry UTM parameters through landing page redirects with a click of a button.

Incentivized

• Session replay.
• Integration with Google Analytics.
• Struggle score.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• They only did one part of an audit and said they were going to finish it, but never did. I've followed up with the account person and haven't heard back. This is a recent development this didn't happen with 2 other audits they did.
• It has aspects to try and narrow down the data, but it's still a lot of data to parse, so in the end, it still takes a lot of time to truly use it.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Very good support and super helpful implementation specialists.

Incentivized

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.

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.

Incentivized

I have never used any other similar tool and I am happy to say they proved exactly what we need.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Allowed us to improve our website in-house
• Relatively low cost solution
• Customer engagement and sales on website increased

Incentivized