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Optimizely Web Experimentation

Optimizely Web Experimentation

Overview

What is Optimizely Web Experimentation?

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.

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Recent Reviews
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 33 features
  • a/b experiment testing (92)
    9.3
    93%
  • Standard visitor segmentation (85)
    8.9
    89%
  • Test significance (84)
    8.5
    85%
  • Preview mode (82)
    8.0
    80%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Video Reviews

1 video

Optimizely Web Experimentation Review from a Director of Partnerships
08:08
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Pricing

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What is Optimizely Web Experimentation?

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.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.optimizely.com/plans/

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Features

Testing and Experimentation

These features enable companies to plan, set up, and execute different types of tests (e.g. A/B, A/B/n, multivariate, split URL tests).

8
Avg 8.6

Audience Segmentation & Targeting

A set of tools used for website optimization experiments (e.g. A/B, A/B/n, funnel, split URL, multivariate tests) that can help users segment their audience in to different groups for the purpose of exposing specific audiences to tests or personalization efforts.

8.6
Avg 8.8

Results and Analysis

Tools that allow users to evaluate the results of website optimization tests (e.g. A/B, A/B/n, multivariate, and split URL tests), or view visitor interaction with webpages and specific site elements.

8.3
Avg 8.5
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Product Details

What is Optimizely Web Experimentation?

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.

Optimizely provides a single workspace for experimentation collaborators to have control and visibility across their experiments — from setting up experiment components to interpreting test results — ultimately to improve velocity and collaboration, and elevate performance.

Optimizely Web Experimentation Features

Testing and Experimentation Features

  • Supported: a/b experiment testing
  • Supported: Split URL testing
  • Supported: Multivariate testing
  • Supported: Multi-page/funnel testing
  • Supported: Cross-browser testing
  • Supported: Mobile app testing
  • Supported: Test significance
  • Supported: Visual / WYSIWYG editor
  • Supported: Advanced code editor
  • Supported: Preview mode
  • Supported: Test duration calculator
  • Supported: Experiment scheduler
  • Supported: Experiment workflow and approval
  • Supported: Dynamic experiment activation
  • Supported: Client-side tests
  • Supported: Server-side tests
  • Supported: Mutually exclusive tests

Audience Segmentation & Targeting Features

  • Supported: Standard visitor segmentation
  • Supported: Behavioral visitor segmentation
  • Supported: Traffic allocation control
  • Supported: Website personalization

Results and Analysis Features

  • Supported: Form fill analysis
  • Supported: Goal tracking
  • Supported: Test reporting
  • Supported: CSV export

Platform Integration Features Features

  • Supported: API
  • Supported: Web analytics integration
  • Supported: Content Management System Integration
  • Supported: Integration with CRM or DMP software

Optimizely Web Experimentation Screenshots

Screenshot of the visual editor, used to make changes to the appearance and layout of a website.Screenshot of the results dashboard that displays experiment results.Screenshot of the integrations page, where integrations can be enabled.

Optimizely Web Experimentation Video

Optimizely Web Experimentation Competitors

Optimizely Web Experimentation Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported LanguagesEnglish

Optimizely Web Experimentation Downloadables

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

AB Tasty, VWO, and Adobe Target are common alternatives for Optimizely Web Experimentation.

Reviewers rate Traffic allocation control highest, with a score of 9.4.

The most common users of Optimizely Web Experimentation are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(487)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(101-125 of 177)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Sylvia Flores | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Battle testing marketing messages.
  • Personalization to prospects and customers.
  • Product feature testing.
  • Their user experience in Bang On!
  • I've had some bugs with the preview tool.
  • Their cost structure sucks for small businesses - they seem to be aiming for more medium to enterprise-sized customers who need scale.
  • Analytics are a bit weak as it applies to user retention.
Polly Harris | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • It's simple to integrate with any website, one tag in the header and you're good to go in a few minutes!
  • The interface to set up experiments is easy to use for simple experiments, just about anyone who can use a computer can set up an experiment in the Optimizely editor.
  • Their new Stats Engine they realeased a few years back allows marketers to declare a winner sooner (with a smaller required sample size) than traditional statistics would allow.
  • While it's great they offer a free version, technical support for more difficult experiment set up is unavailable unless you are an enterprise level member.
  • Optimizely has a synchronous tag, which means it cannot be added to a website using Google Tag Manager (>90% of all sites using a TMS use GTM so this affects most users.)
  • I'm sure most of us mathletes would appreciate a more in depth explanation of the statistics used in their new Stats Engine. I did a lot of digging when it was first released and wasn't able to get answers from their support team. It's great to be able to test more rapidly but understanding the maths behind the decision engine is paramount - or your essentially flying blind.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • A/B Testing: To run an A/B test through Optimizely is incredibly simple when compared to other tools. And if you're using WordPress, it's even more easy as they have a plugin that enables you to use the tool directly through the CMS.
  • Simple personalization: There is no need to hire/contract a full stacked developer to create a website that can personalize for visitors; Optimizely enables you to do simple personalizations. And from a B2B perspective, we didn't want to put all our eggs in the basket on personalization, so Optimizely enabled us to test it out.
  • Display of Data: The graphs that you get are simple and easy to understand. And with their "Always Valid' analytics promise, I feel like I'm seeing the correct data at all times.
  • While I love the personalization feature on desktop, we have encountered glitches with the function on mobile. There are times where it slows down mobile speed, won't load correctly, or doesn't work.
  • The visual editor is easy to use, but I do often become flustered with lag time on changes, or just being unable to format something the way I want it.
  • The audience targeting is helpful for getting things off and running, but you have to make sure it's formatted correctly, or else you have to start over, or update manually.
Chris Lesner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • You can a/b test colors of buttons and text
  • You can a/b test the words within buttons, your nav bar, etc.
  • You can swap out pictures based on what pictures are engaged with more
  • You learn a lot about what your customers are actually doing and clicking and what language they would use vs. your own language.
  • The price is very expensive. Too expensive for the average person.
  • If you want to use this on a mass level, you need a developer.
  • This is minor, but they could suggest things based on what has worked on other sites etc.
December 19, 2018

Optimizely review

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Setting up simple tests.
  • Easy implementation.
  • Simple metrics to make conclusions based on the test results are easy to set up.
  • It's not complex enough in web interface changes and experience building.
  • It can interfere with the live versions of the page and disrupt the design.
  • Analytics platform does not integrate with popular tools like Adobe Analytics.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Optimizely offers a number of great features that other testing services do not.
  • Optimizely allows us to test within certain timeframes and in specific timezones.
  • One of the cooler features Optimizely offers is its multivariate testing. It automates multiple tests at one time.
  • My biggest con is that the service is much more expensive than its competitors.
  • There are too many tiers to the services. The basic tier, which is still pricey only gets you simple A/B tests and not all the bells and whistles.
  • It did not allow me to extend the account to other managers in my department.
December 13, 2017

Decent optimization tool

Thue Lægdsgaard Madsen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • It is very easy to set up a test and split traffic to various test variations.
  • It has a decent smart editor for tests that only involve small changes.
  • The version that we use (Optimizely classic) has a decent amount of integration with other analysis tools.
  • It is way too expensive.
  • The editor is only useful when you run a test involving small/simple changes to your pages.
  • The support is lacking.
Tigran Hakobyan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Easy integration
  • Great platform for A/B testing
  • You can start and run experiments straight from the dashboard, no need to ask developers to change anything in the code
  • The pricing model was hard to understand and could be improved
  • Our website loading took longer when Optimizely code was added, would be great to see this improved/solved
  • Getting on board was easy, but still took some time to understand the details
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Optimizely has a great WYSIWYG editor, very intuitive and easy to use. For more advanced users, you also have access to the raw code, which I go in frequently to clean up things that the editor may have done.
  • I'm a huge fan of Optimizely's targeting criteria. I know that I can run tests on my site based on almost an audience I'd like.
  • I really enjoy Optimizely's analytics and reporting. They allow you to choose which metrics you're looking for, then they have built in confidence percentages to show you at a glance how your test is running.
  • Optimizely used to be free, now it's pretty expensive. Luckily, my account was grandfathered in, but I really think they're making a mistake by moving to a paid-only model instead of a freemium.
  • Sometimes there is a "flicker" when your page first loads where you can see the original page before the experience loads. Most visitors probably won't notice but it is not desirable.
  • The reporting doesn't always match up to the same stuff I see in Google Analytics. I know there is multiple reasons that this could be happening, but it is something to keep in mind when analyzing your data.
Grant Wilkins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Quickly and easily set up new A/B tests. Some tests can be completed in only a few minutes.
  • A robust results engine. It automatically creates segments based off URL parameters and other common criteria (new vs returning) in addition to predefined criteria you set up.
  • The support of the Optimizely implementation team and customer care is fantastic. Optimizely easily ranks as one of our best third party software vendors. They provide not just knowledge of how to use the tool, but how to build a culture around testing and experimentation within your company.
  • Acts as a great lightweight content management system for making temporary changes. We use Optimizely to make changes for 100% of traffic for controlling scheduled promotions and also bug fix patches while waiting for permanent fixes.
  • Geo-targeting for tests does not allow you to use ZIP Codes.
  • URL targeting does not have a mass upload option for lists of unrelated URLs. It does have substring and regular expression matches that cover most other needs.
  • The preview feature rarely works as expected. We run tests on a dedicated testing environment to preview and do QA.
Andrew Weitsman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Test setup is fast and easy, without using many resources.
  • Customizable metrics allow flexibility in monitoring and reporting of experiment performance.
  • Constant updates ensure that experiments run cleanly on all devices and platforms.
  • Intuitive user interface allows users to learn the platform quickly and efficiently.
  • Some rendering issues with older pages set to http: instead of https: (Optimizely is in the latter); there's a workaround that they provide, but users will need to know to look in the knowledgebase to find it.
  • Would like more baked-in metrics (e.g. time on site) and the opportunity to cross-compare different metrics (e.g. clicks as a percentage of engagement instead of visitors).
  • Occasional issues in rendering previews.
Brynn Arego | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Test setup is easy and doesn't take a lot of company resources.
  • The impact on page speed is incredibly small.
  • The results dashboard gives great insights to how your test is performing and you can track multiple goals.
  • I'd like to see more tools comparable to Visual Website Optimizer (VWO). Like user recordings and in page analytics.
  • If you have a dynamic area of information and edit it you pose a risk to making the page templates dynamic data static across the site. Pricing is a great example of this.
Matthew Pimenta | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Optimizely does fairly pain-free WYSIWYG web editing. Once the code has been implemented, it is easy to move around pieces of the website, resize and format different elements around the page. You don't need that much experience in coding to operate Optimizely, although it helps.
  • Optimizely allows the team to target and serve different pages based on UTM tags.
  • Optimizely allows unparalleled creativity in determining triggers for different pages to show. With Optimizely, you can discover the geographic location of users, reference this against the weather patterns in their area and serve a different website. This may be a particularly useful tool if your client is REI, for example. REI would benefit from showing a website optimized for cold-weather climates to cold weather climates. The same goes for more temperate and warm climates. Optimizing your website so that users find what they're looking for, convert, and stay longer is the goal. And Optimizely is a great way to start reaching that goal.
  • Perhaps in the certification exams - these seem much easier when described, but take a surprising amount of studying, especially into development specialties. It's mentioned that no developer skills are needed to pass certification, but very specific certification questions are asked regarding JavaScript, HTML, and tagging that the regular account manager or similar jobs wouldn't have knowledge of.
Joseph Taylor | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Making quick variations on pages for testing - you can use the GUI or just whip up some jQuery so you can do more advanced tests.
  • Love the reporting/results page - once you establish real goals to measure it's just awesome.
  • At least in our network, the previews often never load - this could just be our network.
  • Having to routinely click the little shield in the address bar to load the editor is annoying - again I think this is just our network.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Very easy to configure experiment targeting, traffic allocation, and other settings you would want to customize for your testing program
  • Allows easy selection of experiment types like Multivariate, Multipage, A/B
  • Permits simple UI changes using its code editor and other options which allows for decreased reliance on development resources. Product and Design teams can launch new experiments easily on their own
  • Support is first rate: knowledgeable, great communicators who take the time to explain things so that you can learn and apply to future experiments. Optimizely customer support is among the best I've encountered from a web software service
  • Improvements can be made with experiment results reporting specifically customization of data within the data export or whatever is viewed on the summary page
  • Different organizations could have different thresholds for statistical significance. Optimizely is set to 95%. It would be nice to have this value configurable.
  • It is difficult to ascertain whether a losing variation is a statistically significant loss (only shows low chance to beat baseline). Having this would assist with pausing variations that are not performing very well.
  • Customizable, distributable reports would be a great feature to add. Currently you must click through each individual experiment to see experiment details. Seeing a summary through email or selecting multiple experiments to view on one page would be a huge improvement for scanning health of tests.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Optimizely's WYSIWYG interface allows marketers who do not know how to code to make design changes easily.
  • Optimizely informs a marketer when a test is complete and doesn't assume you have a deep understanding of statistics.
  • Optimizely's documentation is thorough and helpful.
  • Optimizely can allow novices to make many small changes that, in sum, add a lot of overhead to code execution.
  • Optimizely does not have a pleasant way of viewing past tests or exporting results.
  • It can be buggy.
Benjamin Himley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Quick and easy test setup if you've got the html/css changes ready to go.
  • Detailed analytics, providing all sorts of quality information such as totals vs uniques.
  • Support always picks up the phone right away! Great with answering your questions and often also give suggestions on better ways to test
  • Please add more APIs for exporting data and integrate into a data warehouse so that we could perform our own analytics!
  • The Optimizely script sometimes slows page loading time.
  • It would be nice to be able to auto-pause experiments at a particular time.
Sergei Kogut | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • A/B testing - this is the core functionality that Optimizely has always been great with and only got better as they add more functionality.
  • Test analytics - the reporting pages are great, the impact of the tests on revenue is extremely difficult to calculate correctly. Optimizely has made a lot of updates to their statistics engine, latest round of changes upset a lot of people, but it's still doing a great job presenting very complicated data in a simple way.
  • Personalization - still new and barely out of beta, but already looks promising and judging by the quality of the core product, A/B testing, this should be a hit with marketers as well.
  • Test results - the under the hood calculations could be more transparent, while the statistics engine does a ton of very complex calculations that we don't really need to see, in the end it provides one number for "statistical significance". As that number changes over time, sometimes its apparent fluctuations make no intuitive sense. This can make it difficult to justify test results to management and the rest of the team.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Great for fast development especially with basic CSS components.
  • Transparent results allow results to be shared across all departments.
  • The user interface is very straightforward and Optimizely's free online documentation is an excellent resource.
  • Advance code has issues especially with conditional activation on heavy JavaScript frameworks.
  • Direct customer service via phone is not as transparent as it could be.
  • Experiments can take a while to load, and previewing is sometimes not accurate due to slow caching issues.
Lisa Pinto-Hendron | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Optimizely has a really powerful WYSIWYG editor. Not every marketing department is blessed with a talented developer. So this puts the power in the business user's hand, without getting bogged down in coding.
  • If you are blessed with a talented developer (as we are) you also have the option of doing very advanced coding through the Optimizely program. This gives us flexibility we never had before and a window to testing we never thought possible.
  • Optimizely segmentation is a power tool. The ability to customize the testing experience based on the segment is a strong advantage to any testing tool. We haven't even scratched the surface on the segments we can test through.
  • It would be helpful to add some advanced reporting. We have some scenarios where to only want to proof our test is to follow a user down a full path which can at times be harder to accomplish. We have solved this problem, mainly, by building customer trigger events.
  • A roll-up of past tests and their outcomes might be a nice feature. We have an offline report that our team lead develops at the end of each test.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • The interface is easy to use and is always improving. I can select tests easily and navigate to goals and audiences with ease.
  • The analytics are very detailed, especially with their latest update that shows us totals vs uniques.
  • They eagerly engage with their clients, offering suggestions in how and what to test.
  • Grouping of related goals together to easily add them to similar projects. There are times when I'm running 10 tests with 12 similar goals. It would be nice to add a group of goals and then edit what else I want or don't want.
  • Some of their suggestions do not relate well to the exact context of how your industry works and how customers use your website.
  • The ability to hide/display and move goals within the results. It can be done in a spreadsheet but I would really like to see it in the web interface.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Their User Interface is so easy to use. You don't have to be a coder to set up a test. It's simply amazing.
  • Their support is by far the best I've ever experienced. They always pick up the phone right away and are so helpful to answer your questions and to also give suggestions on better ways to do your tests.
  • Sometimes it's a little tricky using third party jQuery plugins that we have on our site. It's not necessarily bad, but it could be better.
  • The reporting is good, but it could be more robust. Simply a data table with a time chart. Would be nice to have more of a graphical interaction for their reports.
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