Item: Optimizely Customized Commerce
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Optimizely Commerce Cloud is the platform upon which we have built a direct-to-consumer eCommerce website. It represents our brand to the end consumers and also facilitates the sale of products. All departments within the organization have a stake in the platform, but the primary interactions are within the Digital Marketing team, IT, and Product. Optimizely has given us an excellent balance between out-of-the-box functionality, and customization opportunities, which together allowed us to produce the eCommerce site we envisioned at an efficient pace, and to maintain and expand it on an ongoing basis.

Pros and Cons

Building blocks: develop in reusable pieces, rather than developing every page individually
Dynamic capabilities: data-driven and dynamic generation of content, rather than static
Headless platform: integrating with other systems and channels is easy.

Promos out-of-box capabilities are limited.
Catalog audit history could be expanded.
Talent pool for development could be expanded.

Return on Investment

Efficient handling of orders from multiple channels and brands.
Requires a strong support team both administratively and technically.

Usability

The administrative interface is largely intuitive and relatively easy to use. The complexity of business needs and ability to customize can affect this (i.e. you have to set up and develop with the user in mind), but the basic structure is largely solid. There are some areas of redundancy (such as Commerce Manager overlapping with other administrative areas) that can sometimes cause confusion or offer some functions in one place, whereas other related functions are managed on a completely different page.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify, Magento Commerce and part of Adobe Commerce Cloud

Optimizely is more flexible and more customizable, but also more efficient from a development standpoint. Salesforce Commerce Cloud has more capabilities but is more prone to become complex, and also generally more expensive. Magento is a comparable alternative but with less headless capability and a more rigid nature. Shopify is much more templated and faster to implement, but far more limited in features, customization, and expandability.

Key Insights

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

Yes

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

Yes

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

Yes

Did implementation of Optimizely Customized Commerce go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Optimizely Customized Commerce again?

Yes

Other Software Used

inRiver PIM, Smartsheet, Avalara, Braintree, Spreedly, Yotpo, Mailchimp

Likelihood to Recommend

Very strong fit for mid-sized organizations that need more flexibility and customization as compared to canned or template-based offerings, but also want the efficiency and externalization that comes with a pre-existing, cloud-hosted platform (as compared to a full custom offering). Works well with a PIM and more mature catalog data in order to fully leverage the dynamic data capabilities.

Flexibility Meets Efficiency

Overall Satisfaction with Optimizely Commerce Cloud (formerly Episerver Commerce Cloud)