We use Optimizely Web Experimentation across our websites to optimise our customer journeys, helping to drive more donors, volunteers, campaigners, service users and more. Experimentation makes it easy to create consistent experiences across multiple pages.
Pros
Robust reporting engine
Easy to use UI
Flexible experiment triggers and audience rules
Cons
Using platform can be tricky for non technical users. Particularly with selecting elements.
Limited tools for exporting reporting
Reports are retired after a certain time making it unreliable as a long-term experimention repository
Likelihood to Recommend
If your website has plenty of traffic and you have the resources to run a CRO programme, you will struggle to find a more robust tool to run your experiments.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Marketing (Non-profit Organization Management company, 201-500 employees)
We use Optimizely Web Experimentation to better understand our users and how to make shopping on our websites a positive and seamless experience. We typically target all users to get a better sense of our broader audience in addressing low hanging fruit, such as simple UI changes to CTAs, font sizes, copy, etc.
Pros
In-depth analytics - seeing the breakdown for each metric we set up is extremely helpful in understanding the impact of our test in parts vs as a whole.
Cons
As a user without much technical background, it can be difficult to set up more complex experiments without outsourcing help.
Likelihood to Recommend
Overall, Optimizely Web Experimentation is a great tool and I would recommend it to a colleague. Conducting simple A/B tests such as changing colors, text, hiding a button or feature was easy to do, but more complex tests such as implementing or hiding dynamic features and modules required some development support. While it is a great tool, it is not the most user friendly.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Product Management (Consumer Services company, 501-1000 employees)
Currently, we are collaborating on brain storming sessions on how to deliver more specific details to our customers. We pair that with the content management platform so we can connect the better ideas to the existing products we have to, hopefully, create a more diverse product offering then what we currently offer.
Pros
Integrations with third-party APIs
Scaling of content production
Create 1:1 experiences
Cons
More API integrations
Continue enhancing documentation
A larger presence at conferences
Likelihood to Recommend
Designing custom and meaningful 1:1 experiences is one of the best examples I can give where you need to try Optimizely Web Experimentation. The way you can craft your content to very specific use-cases is worth it all alone. If you are looking for a cookie cutter generic tool, this isn't for you.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (Non-profit Organization Management company, 201-500 employees)
We use Optimizely to test our online ticketing and donation systems, to try to increase revenue and conversion.
Pros
Easy integration with our website and systems.
Makes it easy for any average user to set up and deploy tests.
Use of custom Javascript has expanded the reach of our tests.
Cons
Integration with Google Analytics.
Likelihood to Recommend
There are a lot of instances where we don't have enough traffic to reach statistical significance, so this either creates tests that never have outcomes or just makes changes without testing and monitoring results instead of testing.
VU
Verified User
Director (Non-Profit Organization Management company, 501-1000 employees)
Optimizely is being used primarily with our product managers within one department. It has allowed us to use experimentation to prove our hypothesis that have directly affected change for our public facing membership webpages.
Pros
The tech support has been outstanding.
The online documentation is very well written. It makes it easy for us to solve our own challenges.
The analytics reporting has been very helpful for us to understand what our audience likes and dislikes.
Cons
I would have liked to use the Full Stack product, but it was just too expensive to justify its additional cost.
I would have liked more control over user permissions and global controls over all experiments.
Integration of third-party software was confusing at first.
Likelihood to Recommend
I would recommend using Optimizely for any website with an ecommerce component as it has the potential to pay for itself if you use a UX Designer and a Front End Developer to implement your experiment ideas.
Optimizely has been a great addition to our digital analytics landscape and opened up a world of otpimization unknown before at the AMA. The on-boarding and support from Optimizely is unmatched. They have been able to set us up for success not only in how to execute on testing, but in getting buy-in from our organization. Would recommend for any organization looking to start their own testing program.
Pros
Growing in terms of capabilities.
Unmatched service.
Cons
Further ecomm reporting.
Likelihood to Recommend
Ask about integration with current analytics toolset.
We are using Optimizely to confirm / disprove our hypothesis on our website. It is being used by IT and we work with our internal clients to set-up and run A/B tests. Optimizely enables us to remove bottlenecks through various funnels on our website.
Pros
Optimizely UX is very easy to use and find what you're looking for / set-up small changes on the site.
Customer service has been amazing.
There is a great user community that helps answer questions. Chances are, someone has run into the same issue you're experiencing.
Cons
In some instances page load speed can be affected by the Optimizely tag. Fortunately, in all cases that this has impacted a test, customer service has helped speed up the test.
Some changes require dev effort. It would be nice if the tool had more functionality to limit dev and design resources.
Likelihood to Recommend
Optimizely is a great tool that lets you easily set up A/B tests. The learning curve is rather small and they have a great resource / training section that will allow you to be brought up to speed quickly. I've used multiple A/B testing platforms and Optimizely is by-far the most user friendly tool. When we did our POC for purchasing an A/B testing platform this was a huge deciding factor.
We used it in Product Management, User Experience, and Marketing to test everything from colors to messaging and other website creative. It helped us increase revenue by optimizing the conversion rate on our website.
Pros
Easy to set tests up
Inexpensive for what you get
Fun to experiment with
With enough traffic, you don't have to wait long to see results!
Cons
Sometimes pages don't get enough traffic to make for a worthwhile test (not Optimizely's fault)
When I used it, they didn't have great options for mobile testing
Sometimes test pages can take awhile to load, due to extra JavaScript on the site
Likelihood to Recommend
A/B testing in general is well-suited to websites that get a fair amount of traffic. It's also better for making small tweaks, versus testing two totally different pages. Therefore, it's best to use Optimizely on a page that you're already relatively satisfied with.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Marketing (Consumer Services company, 11-50 employees)
When I used Optimizely - and I still will be in future - it was just me at Engaging Networks who used it. We used it to help clients decide which of their fundraising pages converted better.
Pros
It's so easy to set up a split test even if you have no coding knowledge
It's good at tracking the results
You can do multivariate testing
Great interface
Cons
The main problem I had with Optimizely is that it caused test pages to render much more slowly than pages where the Optimizely embed code wasn't being used. Given how important speed is to the web and to ROI, this is a serious problem, and as a result I try to use Optimizely as little as possible.
Likelihood to Recommend
It's great to use for a short time to solve an internal disagreement or answer a hunch that you have about why a page is really under performing. Because of the speed issue, it's less good for continual optimization.
