Powerful Optimization Tool -- But comes with a price.
December 06, 2017

Powerful Optimization Tool -- But comes with a price.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Other

Overall Satisfaction with Optimizely

We manage multiple brands, and we choose to use Optimizely on one of them. We mainly use Optimizely on this website for testing to improve our conversion rate with simple A/B tests, and we also use Optimizely to modify messaging and sales prices on front of site when running flash sales. In a pinch, we can also use Optimizely to make hot fixes when we find errors and typos, until we can get our dev team to put a more permanent fix in for the bug.
  • 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.
  • Being that we are still on the free version, the return on investment has been fantastic. If we were paying for it, I'd have to take a closer look.
  • We have seen a slight bump in our conversion rate based on changes that we made due to tests ran in Optimizely.
  • Using Optimizely to throw up flash sales when we are slow has really helped us. Being able to announce that we are running a sale and show sale prices on front of site without needed to take up dev resources helps us a lot.
I feel like Optimizely has more functionality in the editor, but for the price, Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) can't be beat. I haven't had as much experience with VWO but from what I've seen, I can get many of the same benefits with that software as well. The VWO onboarding is great and they also have powerful targeting.
I used to recommend Optimizely to everyone, but with it being pay to play now, it is best used only for larger businesses. If you are a small business owner who is just looking to take advantage of some small testing on your site, you may be better off looking elsewhere (perhaps VWO or some other software that is priced based on traffic).