Item: Optimizely
Rating: 10
Author: Emily Emmer

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Optimizely has been used by the marketing department for 6+ years. A/B testing with Optimizely helps us make changes after we've tested impact with our site visitors. We've also used Optimizely as a quick fix for any site issues when resolving through developer resources will be too cumbersome.

Pros and Cons

Simple technical interface that allows for marketing-centric A/B testing, it pulls the power of experimentation back into Marketing's wheelhouse.
Excellent support resources: It's easy to get customer support on the phone and they're fully equipped to resolve issues.
Great training and certification resources.

Limited visibility to product roadmap and ability to influence that roadmap.
Mandatory transition to new platform with no access to previous testing was inconvenient (2018).
Creating swim-lane testing for tests with the same conversion metric is a bit cumbersome.

Return on Investment

Simplicity and ease of use has improved test agility, enabling us to test often!
Experimentation has provided significant impact on our conversions and conversion rates.

Scalability

Optimizely offers excellent testing features and incredible technical support and training resources enabling non-technical teams most benefited by experimentation to truly own this function. Optimizely is easy to implement and use, has simple integration with other technologies making it a staple in our marketing technology stack. Finally, Optimizely continues to innovate around its core technology to add new features and capabilities to improve the overall experimentation process (such as acquiring Experimentation Engine in 2018). In a dynamic and ever-changing marketing technology landscape expect to continue using Optimizely in my marketing technology stack for many years to come.

Usability

Optimizely is extremely easy to use with a great interface, excellent training tools, and resources, and my favorite their best-in-class technical support (they're all engineers with a high tolerance for low technical knowledge).

Optimizely Platform Scope

Optimizely can be a one-stop-shop for designing, implementing and analyzing simple tests. As test complexity rises the ability to perform more detailed analysis to include additional details such as the number of pages visited, average time per visit, and bounce rate by variation requires integration with a 3rd party analytics tool. Fortunately, integrations with Optimizely are pretty straight-forward making an analytics integration fairly simple.

Alternatives Considered

Optimizely competes with many other products. Adobe Target, Monetate, Convert.com, Maxymizer are a few competitors. Optimizely is one of the most affordable solutions given the set of features and capabilities. While it may be slightly less robust in features (particularly around multi-variate testing) as Adobe Target it provides far more testing agility since it doesn't require tests to be set-up by IT resources.

Likelihood to Recommend

Optimizely is a great A/B testing tool for any size business. The Optimizely platform democratizes A/B testing through a simple interface, excellent training tools, easy implementation and low dependence on IT resources. Utilizing Optimizely I've been able to run robust experimentation programs with a variety of resources (acting as a 1-person team with limited access to IT resources as well as managing a team with high access to resources). Additionally, Optimizely is well-priced and positioned to be affordable for a variety of business sizes.

Optimizely for marketers

Overall Satisfaction with Optimizely