Item: Optimizely Customized Commerce
Rating: 1
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The console is being used to consume our PIM data and display it on 2 different websites (multichannel). The first site is B2B and has been live for almost 2 years, the other is B2C and will launch in the next couple of months. Optimizely Commerce Cloud also pulls in pricing and other elements from the ERP to display on the website and aid in the order-taking process.

Pros and Cons

The uptime appears reliable.
It provides an easy plug-in for AD 360-spin images.
The UI is intuitive.

Media library search in the console is impossible as it times out.
Error report email needs to give detailed information as to what the exact error is upon job failure.
Better handling of large amounts of data coming in from the PIM. 50k XML files a night is not usual, but it does happen on occasion. It just happens when you have 400k SKUs. Data clean-up is ongoing.
Out-of-the-box solutions for cross-selling, replacement parts, clearance, overstock, was/now sale pricing should be considered as a site is brought online instead of treated as an 'enhancement'.
The ability to consume category, attribute name, and sort order info provided from the PIM should also be an out-of-the-box function and not a 'future enhancement'.
The settings have to be the same for products on both channels, which is not ideal!

Return on Investment

Positive: We have a usable website - better than what we had before and we are seeing a constant increase in adoption.
Positive: Counter associates are using the website to help customers.
Negative: Too much time being spent QCing previous work.

Usability

The previously mentioned issues remain difficult to resolve paired with the necessity for a 3rd party or in-house developer that is required to have Optimizely certification, in each specific offering of Optimizely's limits our ability to explore viable solutions.

Alternatives Considered

Stibo STEP MDM and HubSpot Marketing Hub

Stibo STEP MDM was a powerhouse. It seems we could do anything we could dream up, but we also had an in-house IT dev team to support it. The cost was the reason we went with Optimizely Commerce Cloud. We did not explore HubSpot for this project.

Key Insights

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

Not sure

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

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

Did implementation of Optimizely Customized Commerce go as expected?

Would you buy Optimizely Customized Commerce again?

Other Software Used

inRiver PIM, Adobe PhotoShop, AvePoint Cloud Management, Airtame, Cisco Jabber, Cisco AnyConnect, Crazy Egg, FileZilla

Likelihood to Recommend

Our experience may be unique because we opted for an Epi core team to implement our website/console set-up and connection to our PIM and ERP. The experience may have been different with a 3rd party or it may not have. That said, we have been live with our primary website for almost 2 years and I still do not consider it was ever "done". We have been going back and forth on functionality issues and bugs since launch. I have low confidence that changes made the previous day will 100% be online the next - so my team rechecks the work they did the previous day to ensure everything is online. The addition of a second channel and enhancement requests have compounded the issues. I feel this product would work fine with singular or less complex market SKU offerings.

Show Me - Don't Tell Me. Ask for a Working Demo!

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