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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

Data has no opinions

8 out of 10
April 16, 2024
Incentivized
It's simple for us, we want to make data driven decisions and Optimizely Web Experimentation gives us the tools and data we need to …
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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 (95)
    9.3
    93%
  • Standard visitor segmentation (87)
    8.9
    89%
  • Test significance (87)
    8.5
    85%
  • Preview mode (85)
    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 8.6
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Product Details

What is Optimizely Web Experimentation?

Optimizely Web Experimentation empowers marketers to conduct fast experiments and personalization campaigns without relying heavily on technical resources. Marketers can test various user interactions, make website changes backed by data, deliver personalized customer experiences, and do it all from edge networks.

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.Screenshot of Advanced Audience Targeting: Custom Real-Time Segments provide customers with the ability to create rapidly-updating segments which can be used as audiences for testing or personalization. These segments can be based on profile data, omni-channel behaviors, and AI-based observations.Screenshot of AI Content Suggestions: AI-powered suggestions in the Visual Editor accelerate ideation.Screenshot of Extensions for Edge: reusable elements minimize developer dependency when launching multiple tests with the same element.

Optimizely Web Experimentation Videos

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

(495)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(126-150 of 180)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
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.
Jeremy Bradford | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Optimizely has a very intuitive interface that really makes learning to use the tool quite easy. Even a complete novice can develop and deploy simple A/B tests with minimal effort.
  • Optiverse, Optimizely's support forum, is an excellent place to learn how to take your A/B testing to the next level. I've gone from running simple copy change tests to advanced multi-page funnel testing.
  • The ability to simply modify existing pages on your site rather than recreating them and redirecting traffic has been immensely valuable and allowed us to deploy tests much faster than we did before.
  • I'm often frustrated with how hard it is to monitor results from my phone. I wish there was a mobile optimized version of the results section. I'm often travelling on the weekends and need to check on our tests via my phone. It can be done, but it's a very sub-optimal experience.
  • I wish I could see the results of all my active tests on a single dashboard. Currently you have to drill into each experiment individually. Since I sometimes have as many as 10-15 experiments running, a good part of my day is spent monitoring a ton of open tabs for each test.
  • Just nitpicking, but it would be nice to be able to reorder your experiment's goals without having to exit editing mode and return to the main projects page.
Abel Ramos | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • The product itself is very user friendly. There are varying degrees of technical expertise on the teams that employ this program. The product's ease of use was a real selling point.
  • Their Customer Service has been nothing short of spectacular. We have a dedicated Account Manager who is really attentive to our questions and connects us the the correct person in their organization to help solve any issues we have.
  • Their developer API connections offer so many custom solutions that are not included out of the box. As each business is different, this flexibility has been a tremendous asset to continue to help us grow.
  • Showcase their users' implementations.
August 14, 2015

Optimizely Rocks

Renee Thompson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Stellar support. Every person we've worked with on the support side has been knowledgeable and super helpful. Top notch for sure, and a great attitude to go along with the support.
  • The product is so easy to use. Flexible while being user-friendly. We are able to do things quickly and easily that we could not do - even with consultant support - with competitive software.
  • Community. The online community is great - it has great content, frequently updated with lots of people contributing. Most questions can be answered by checking the online community/online support. The community manager, Amanda, rocks!
  • Reporting/exporting is a challenge if you want to report on data across multiple campaigns. This may not be an issue for some, but for us we typically have multiple test campaigns set up in support of a particular project. We compile/aggregate results manually. We have to look up/export results campaign by campaign, which is time-consuming.
  • While the product, development/engineering, support and community folks at Optimizely are rock stars, their sales folks are not. Most of the people have impressed us in so many ways - so very customer-oriented, as Optimizely tends to be as a company/brand. However, from our perspective it's felt a little like the sales folks are not even part of the same organization. Very 'traditional' salesy. :(
  • We'd like to be able to set up multiple 'projects' in Optimizely for better/easier organization. However, each project requires its own code snippet for your site(s). This precludes us from creating multiple projects, and thus it's a little unwieldy in our interface. Also, since we have so many sites and campaigns, our code snippet is much larger than we would like. This again is a symptom of our own organization, where we have many, many sites (unlike many other companies).
Brian DeLoach | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • The interface is extremely easy to use. If you are a novice, the WYSIWYG allows you to easily make simple changes to your site. If you are comfortable doing so there is also the code editor which is powerful enough for you to make dramatic changes to your site.
  • Optimizely's support is top notch. This was the primary reason we switched from our previous testing provider. They have extensive knowledge in scripting and are always quick to respond with useful information.
  • Optimizely has created a community of A/B testers and optimizers that allows us to share ideas with other groups.
  • Optimizely doesn't seem as buttoned up on the sales side as they are on the product and support side. Granted those other groups set a very high bar.
  • Optimizely doesn't have a useful engagement metric out of the box. You have to integrate your analytics platform with it which for us was a challenge.
  • We were grandfathered in from a Platinum plan which Optimizely no longer uses; they now have Enterprise and Starter I believe. We assumed since we had the Platinum plan that we were converted to the Enterprise plan but when we tried to access certain features we realized that wasn't the case.
George McMullen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • When we started implementing Optimizely on mobile (iOS and Android), the team at Optimizely was particularly helpful in working with the engineers and product team. This really accelerated the process for us to dive in and get started using the product.
  • The Optimizely team seems very passionate about helping their customers get the most out of their platform. They are always available to answer an e-mail, support request, forum post, jump on a phone call and even come by for a visit. On the flip side, they are always asking for feedback on the product, which provides a sense that we are working with a living, breathing company.
  • Optimizely has spent a lot of time understanding the intricacies of multivariate testing and statistical analysis and made it dead simple to see the results in their product. Even if your focus isn't around data, you can plainly see how your experiments are performing and focus on what you are best at. If you want to learn more, they've provided a lot of resources to help you understand concepts like statistical significance.
  • I'd like to see more APIs to be able to export data and integrate it ina data warehouse so that we could perform our own analytics.
  • Sometimes it's not obvious how long an experiment will need to run based on a product's existing traffic. Having an estimate integrated directly into the experiment would be very helpful.
  • Sometimes I am concerned that they've made things too simple to get in and start running experiments, without having proper constructs on what experiments you should be running and what you are actually testing. Just because you've seen results on testing a button in an early stage of a funnel does not mean your end conversion is going to change.
Chad Wales | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Optimizely UX is very easy to use and find what you're looking for / set-up small changes on the site.
  • Customer service has been amazing.
  • There is a great user community that helps answer questions. Chances are, someone has run into the same issue you're experiencing.
  • In some instances page load speed can be affected by the Optimizely tag. Fortunately, in all cases that this has impacted a test, customer service has helped speed up the test.
  • Some changes require dev effort. It would be nice if the tool had more functionality to limit dev and design resources.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Ease of use, no need to involve the developers when we want to test on the front-end.
  • Stable platform. So far we never had any noticeable outings or downtime because of it.
  • Powerful tools for advanced users. Writing your own code and skipping the WYSIWYG editor is a breeze.
  • The company is industry leading, hence the pricing is adjusted accordingly. Makes sense for bigger companies, not so much for small businesses - unless of course they can leverage use on a daily basis with significant results.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Product is very easy to implement and to ramp up with. Even non developers can use it.
  • Extremely easy to manage your experiments, to turn them on/off and dashboard very user friendly.
  • Great capability for user targeting, traffic allocation, etc.
  • Reliable analytics tool (they've made a lot of progress in 2015 with their new results page).
  • Amazing team, very nice to work with, always on top of things and very efficient technical support.
  • Using Optimizely has enabled us to double our testing velocity.
  • We also use optimizely for promotion campaign or quick bug fixes.
  • Sometimes the software can be slow, the dashboard takes some time to load, etc.
  • We still use our internal tool for more complex tests with back-end part.
  • I am still paranoid about the flicker and don't use Optimizely for big tests if it is above the fold.
John Freeborn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • You can set up an experiment without any assistance from your IT staff (after implementation). We don't have to request and wait. We just create a test, deploy and learn.
  • The software is fairly easy to use, flexible and powerful–even for a non-coder.
  • The reporting is really easy to digest and gets you a detailed picture of your test and your testing goals. If you choose to implement the test 100% that is simply a click away.
  • The reporting could be better, maybe more standard. We use Google Analytics on top of the Optimizely reports to verify and dig deeper.
  • If you aren't careful you could easily break your site. This isn't a flaw exactly, but is a potential pitfall.
  • I've heard complaints from IT staff that Optimizely adds too much weight to the page loads.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Testing CTAs (calls to action)
  • Simple HTML changes
  • Measurement
  • Analytics Integration (Google, SiteSatalyst, etc.)
  • Easy to use visual editor
  • customer support
  • Hard to run significant tests without a major development investment on our side--it seemed like it would be a lot easier to implement tests without the help of our dev team
  • Seems slightly less well-suited for media sites or sites where the KPIs are more complex than e-commerce sites (simpler KPIs such as click here or buy now)
February 16, 2015

Optimizely user review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • A/B testing of landing pages
  • Really easy to use
  • Very intuitive
  • Dasboard could be more obvious and less ambiguous
  • Simpler dasboard with bubbles to explain what each feature does
Keith Lovgren | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Split testing unique value propositions - Honestly, split testing text could not be any easier AND the reporting that we're able to deliver is top notch.
  • Experiments that allow you to segment visitors in a variety of ways. One example - first time visitors often behave much differently than repeat visitors. With Optimizely, you can set up tests that are unique to each group.
  • Split testing by traffic source. Need a test just for Facebook users? Twitter users? Or any other referral source can be set up in a matter of minutes.
  • When you look at the price point of the platform there really aren't any "weak points" but as this format requires you to list something here they are.
  • Reporting is great but I'd love a way to export all segments a bit easier like in Google Analytics. I've heard the Optimizely team is working on this so we should see it soon
  • I'd love a client manager like the "My Client Center" in google adwords we use to manage multiple paid search accounts with a single log in.
December 09, 2014

Optimizely - It's Good

Ryan Garner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Provides a dead simple way to get up and running with AB and MVT testing on your web properties via its super simple installation and highly intuitive variation WYSIWYG based editor.
  • Open and transparent with its inner workings. Curious what that WYSIWYG editor is actually doing? Optimizely provides full access to all variation code. Don't like WYSIWYG editors? Handwrite the standard Javascript based variation code yourself. Uncomfortable with code executing on your site that you can't see? Simply append the "optimizely_log=true" parameter to any URL on your website with an experiment running and check the Javacript console. You'll see a highly verbal log of all that is happening. Want to programmatically execute experiments yourself? Checkout Optimizely's extensive API (https://www.optimizely.com/docs/api)
  • Not just for beginners. Being "enterprise" doesn't have to mean being hard to use. See comment above.
  • Very competitively priced.
  • Offers competitive segmenting capabilities which allow you to target experiments based on location, operating system, device type, referral, javascript variables, cookie values, URL patterns of all kinds, and more.
  • Supports mobile web testing with intuitive tools and emulators to create experiments specifically for mobile and tablet devices.
  • Allows you to create custom user segments that can be reused across experiments.
  • Ability to organize and group experiments under "Projects" which can have their own granular user permissions. Ex: Give a partner or member of your team admin access to one set of experiments and read-only access to others.
  • Provides a very simple set of tools to create and track custom experiment goals such as "mouse click" events on a specific button or traffic goals to a specific URL.
  • Ability to demo the product immediately without an initial sales call.
  • With a recent $28 million round of investment, you can feel confident that Optimizely has the funding to stay in business for a long time and continue to disrupt this market. (http://blog.optimizely.com/2013/04/10/optimizely-raises-28-million-to-go-global/)
  • Optimizely does not support the use of alternative algorithms for judging experiment winners such as those of the "bandit" and "adaptive" nature. I can only imagine that doing this would be highly complex, but the ability to select different algorithms could be killer and a true differentiator. I know of no other optimization software vendor that provides algorithmic choices for judging experiment performance.
  • Optimizely is not yet able to ingest and segment off of more advanced and / or custom data sources such as your own CRM data, weather and census data, data from re-targeters like BlueKai, and other fancy data sets that some of the other major players have. There are ways to build work arounds via their segment API and custom targeting variables, but it would be nice if more advanced, pre-built segmentation conditions were included in the product.
  • The integration with Google Analytics, while extremely easy to set-up, leaves a bit to be desired. Its dependent on Custom Variable slots of which you only get 5 if you are not GA Premium (most aren't), and it does things with visitor scope that make repeat visit conversion tracking challenging to do over the course of an experiment without custom Google Analytics JS code to manually set GA visitor scope. That said, there are also work arounds for this as well.
  • There's no experiment version control. You'll often find yourself having to hard refresh while editing variations within an experiment without saving to revert your changes. Not the end of the world because there is this and other work arounds, but it's a nice to have. Again, it's important to point out that few have others have this capability.
Albert Wavering | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Easy to set up test variations, either with their visual tools or with Javascript.
  • Easy to describe goals - can be clicks on a page element, page views, or custom Javascript.
  • Can segment and target visitors based on URL, referral information, custom Javascript conditions, or a number of other variables.
  • Good for previewing and testing variations prior to launching tests - has great live preview functionality and integrates with cross browser testing tools.
  • Has good flexibility and control over implementation - especially important for avoiding the flash of unstyled content problem, as well as Javascript race conditions.
  • API lets you integrate with Google Analytics or other third-party analytics system.
  • Javascript frontend sometimes loads slowly or requires refresh to load completely.
Jane Morgan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Simple to set up and use
  • Accessible to everyone on the marketing team; no web design technical knowledge required
  • Solid results to make objective business decisions; eliminating well-intended but uninformed opinions
  • Would be nice to see an overall score trended over time for all tests. i.e. show the team whether overall the type of tests being run are improving or getting worse. Need to ensure this does not discourage testing.
  • Some of the navigation is a little odd e.g. sometime things open in windows/tabs when you'd expect them to remain in the same window.
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