Optimizely is an all-in-one ecommerce platform that enables users to build impactful digital connections with customers. It has deep roots in the personalization space and stands out as a solution that fosters experimentation and enables brands to drive continual improvements.
Because this ecommerce platform comes with a wealth of features that allow for hyper-personalization and sophisticated web performance optimization, it’s a good fit for businesses focused on growth.
If you’re considering Optimizely for ecommerce optimization, read on. This guide covers key features, benefits, and integration capabilities. We also share three success stories so you can see how ecommerce companies are using Optimizely to speed growth.
What Is Optimizely?
Optimizely is a powerful platform for marketers because it offers multiple tools under one roof.
Digital Experience Platform
It’s a leading digital experience platform (DXP). Gartner named Optimizely as a DXP Leader for the fifth year in a row in 2024.
Testing and experimentation are its strengths thanks to its roots as an A/B testing tool. Optimizely was built by former Google employees in 2010 as a tool for A/B and multivariate testing.
Its founders built AI into the system from the beginning to power personalization and experimentation, and you can experience this legacy through its sophisticated optimization features available today.
Optimizely lets you test essentially every feature on your website. You can create and run experiments and analyze them from every angle, helping you maximize your website’s performance.
Key Optimizely features for experimentation:
- Customizable intake forms for better collaboration
- Variation design tools
- Visual editors with on-page previews
- Embedded AI content suggestions
- Stats Accelerator and Stats Engine
- Audience targeting
Content Management System
Within the Optimizely name, you also have access to one of the most robust content management systems (CMS) on the market. In 2020, Optimizely was acquired by Episerver, unifying a dedicated DXP and CMS.
The CMS lets you plan, create, and manage content in the system. You also get AI-generated insights to help you make targeted content creation decisions.
Key Optimizely features for content orchestration:
- Drag-and-drop builder
- Unlimited content layouts
- Optimizely Graph for searching and delivering content across channels
- Visual experience builder with embedded personalization
- Integrated Digital Asset Management (DAM)
Customized Commerce
And finally, with Optimizely, you get Customized Commerce, which you can use to create custom online buying experiences. Your developers have everything they need to build, test, and optimize the checkout process, helping you achieve frictionless buying experiences.
Key Optimizely features for monetization:
- Personalized landing pages and product recommendations
- Custom checkout workflows
- Integrated shipping, fulfillment, and payout options
4 Optimizely Benefits That Make This Platform Stand Out
Over 9,000 brands use Optimizely to help them optimize their ecommerce sites. It is a powerful personalization and user experience testing tool that can power your end-to-end marketing and ecommerce sales strategies. Here are four of the main benefits of Optimizely for ecommerce companies.
1: Better Personalization Helps to Build Customer Relationships
Personalization increases revenue by 5 to 15%. It can also reduce customer acquisition costs by up to 50%. However, Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of marketers will abandon their personalization efforts due to a lack of ROI or challenges managing customer data.
Optimizely solves these challenges by bringing in AI to streamline personalization efforts. It’s also an all-in-one ecommerce platform so you have a wealth of user data for your system to use to automatically personalize product recommendations, landing pages, checkout features, and more.
2: Experimentation and Testing Mindset Unlocks Growth Opportunities
Ecommerce optimization with Optimizely is a breeze because you can keep experimenting with the features on your website to continually improve performance. The platform offers rich insights, so you continually learn what your customers want and can create even better experiences
The experimentation capabilities give you the ability to adapt to changes swiftly. Ecommerce brands that use Optimizely develop a test-and-learn mindset that helps them turn problems into opportunities for growth.
3: Streamlined Buying Experience Management Makes Friction-Free Purchases a Reality
With Optimizely, you have granular control over the order lifecycle, making it easier to optimize your online sales funnel. You can also build headlessly for multichannel and mass-scale deployment, and then analyze every nuance of the checkout experience for performance.
4: Easy Integrations Increase Efficiency
Most of what you need is a part of the system, so you can get started right away. But even more important than the out-of-the-box features, Optimizely integrates with foundational business tools, including your ERP, CRM, and sales management software.
Optimizely integrations include popular tools like Google Analytics and Microsoft 365. You can choose to integrate with the apps you’re already using as well as new ones to boost productivity and simplify your processes.
How Optimizely Is Helping Brands Grow: Our Success Stories
Guidance is an expert Optimizely web development and design partner. Here are three of the companies we migrated to this ecommerce platform and what we did to help unlock their success.
Dovetail
Dovetail Furniture required an upgrade to help the company better align with the needs of buyers and partners. Our ecommerce development team migrated their site to Optimizely and integrated with their ERP and PIM systems. After the migration, we were able to customize the platform so Dovetail could offer a detailed product catalog with an infinite aisle feature for end users.
We enhanced the user experience with responsive design, intuitive site navigation, and robust tagging and filtering options. Also, to ensure the brand’s customers could access the product specifications they wanted with zero frustrations, we customized Optimizely’s image processing to balance quality and speed and built a detailed image guide.
Rio Grande
Rio Grande has spent the last 80 years becoming one of the largest B2B wholesalers in the Jewelry-making industry.
With a need to modernize their web presence and deliver a better customer experience to their growing global community, Rio Grande partners with Guidance to design a custom-built website equipped with the tools needed to excel in the digital marketplace.
Through a series of complex implementations, Guidance simplifies Rio Grande’s complex catalog, creates an intuitive customer experience, and develops strategic solutions to optimize the site’s performance.
Valvoline
At over 150 years old, Valvoline is an iconic American brand that has seen countless iterations to its oil change and car maintenance solutions. None have been as important as their digital transformation and their commitment to serving customers at every touchpoint, both physical and digital.
The newly launched Valvoline instant Oil Change upgrades their legacy technology to the secure and scalable Optimizely Digital Experience Platform CMS and now enables new additions to their technology stack. Guidance integrated a new location finder, ratings and review solution and an important digital wallet functionality. Furthermore, the new website is entirely mobile-first and provides a seamless experience for customers looking to navigate the brand’s online to offline experience.
Optimizely ecommerce capabilities allow for this high-level tailoring of the user experience, making it an excellent tool for brands across industries.
Let the Experts at Guidance Help You Get the Most Out of Optimizely
Guidance is your go-to expert for Optimizely development services and solutions. Our team can help with migration, customization, and guidance on the best strategy to help your online store reach its goals after implementation.
Rely on Optimizely’s Commerce Partner of the Year for your project. Contact Guidance today to get started.
