Item: Optimizely Configured Commerce
Rating: 5
Author: James Cass

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Optimizely as our B2B product ordering website for our customers. We deployed it to help ease the ordering and reordering process for our customers. Our old site used legacy technology, was very slow, and didn't support faceted search, rich descriptions, or product documentation, and couldn't really be modified to support new features. We wanted a hosted platform, that met these challenges and was a system that we could grow into.

Pros and Cons

Very flexible with integration and workflow capabilities with other systems (ERP, CRM, PIM, etc)
Very rich product detail pages and attributes
Flexible role-based access for many different login types.

Difficult to access internal database
Not easy to maintain without development resources
TCO is quite high compared to competitors

Return on Investment

Increased average order value
Increased amount of customers ordering online-only
Automated imports of products, customers, and suppliers from ERP

Support Rating

Due to several mergers and acquisitions, the company has changed focus several times, but for the better. However, this is disruptive from a customer success manager's perspective. Also, there have been long stretches of no communication, even when there are expectations or pending decisions that need to be addressed.

Usability

Quite flexible and easy to use for daily marketing user tasks, like updating page listings, promotions, and copy. More in-depth tasks like managing product attributes, rearranging product taxonomy placement, and CMS editing are not user-friendly and require a careful and detailed process to follow.

Key Insights

Do you think Optimizely Configured Commerce delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with Optimizely Configured Commerce's feature set?

Yes

Did Optimizely Configured Commerce live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Optimizely Configured Commerce go as expected?

Would you buy Optimizely Configured Commerce again?

Likelihood to Recommend

With a skilled internal development staff, Optimizely is extremely flexible to do just about anything you want it to do. The look, site workflow, and external integration capabilities are stellar. Overall site performance is quite good as well. The hosting management team also does a great job with security and keeping underlying infrastructure (AWS) up to date and using best practices. Without internal development staff, expect a high cost for an outside development partner for implementation, integration, and routine maintenance and updates.

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Emma Davis
(Vendor Representative) commented 2 years ago
Hi James, Thanks for the review of our B2B Commerce software. I understand that some of the drawbacks you experienced with our software included heavy use of technical resources and therefore a higher TCO. We certainly strive to provide tools to make this easier (ERP connectors, the new React frontend builder, etc.), but understand that we have more to do. I think you’ll be excited about an evolution of the platform coming next year that will make updates significantly easier and require less developer resources. In the meantime, we’re taking your feedback to the team so we can work to improve in this area. I also wanted to reach out about the “long stretches of no communication…” That isn’t at all the experience we want to provide to you or any of our customers. I’m sorry for that. The Customer Success team is aware of this short-coming and they are making it a priority to re-establish ample communication with you and your team. They will be reaching out shortly to initiate an improved cadence of communication moving forward. Your partnership means a lot to us, and we will keep working to earn it every day. Thanks again!

Highly capable and customizable, but with a similarly high TCO.

Overall Satisfaction with Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud