2 December, 2016

An Exclusive Sneak-Peek Into Optimizely’s Brand New Platform

By Matthew Pezzimenti

Optimizely, a leading experimentation platform, enabling businesses to deliver continuous experimentation and personalisation across websites, has launched Optimizely X to the market this month.

Before founding the company, Dan Siroker was the digital marketer that famously helped Barack Obama win the 2008 US Presidential election through increasing the rate and volume of online donations. It is well documented that Stocker used A/B testing to develop the most effective landing page which resulted in increased donations, enabling the political campaign to reach even more people.

Siroker said, “A/B testing is great but the current tools suck”, and so both Optimizely, and now Optimizely X, were born.

Optimizely X allows digital marketers to now test conversion and personalised marketing across any platform that has a screen (across any platform, channel, or device). Think not just smartphones but digital OOH, Smart TVs, smartphone apps, emails, VR headsets, smartwatches, etc.

At a full staff briefing on the new venture, Chris Samila, Optimizely’s strategic partnership manager and Hudson Arnold, Optimizely’s strategy consultant, gave some insight into the announcement.

Matthew Pezzimenti, director of CRO agency Conversion Kings, got a sneak peak of Optimizely’s new platform, Optimizely X when they flew Down Under earlier this month. Here’s what he learnt about the new tool:

What is Optimizely Full Stack?

Optimizely Full Stack enables you to run experiments on algorithms, pricing, redesigns, new architectures, omnichannel marketing campaigns, and more.

How will this help Australian retailers?

Discount modelling

Discounting is not a new tactic to generate higher sales. However, what is the right level of discount that will drive increased sales without giving away too much profit? Optimizely Full Stack can now attach itself to your ERP or database to test different pricing models. Turning your hypothesis around price sensitivity into a data driven model.

Redesigns

Another great application to the product is that now testing complete website redesigns is faster and easier. Conversion Kings developers when seen this feature were ecstatic as the last new design validation project weighed in at 400 hour, Full Stack would hope to see this time halved!

Mobile

With app customers for retailers being highly valuable, the focus on making these apps more intuitive so that users will continue to use them is a major focus for many coming into 2017. Optimizely Full Stack now enables app A/B testing to be executed through either iOS or Android.

Other Digital Devices

With the Internet of Things growing everyday, Optimizely Full Stack can now test different experiences such as in-store kiosks, check-in screens at an airport or even Apple TV! This will help Australian retailers that have worked so hard to get a user into their physical store, to then test what in-store experience will increase cash register sales.

How will this help Australian agencies?

Responsive code editor

A large time component to developing tests is ensuring that the experiment works across all screen sizes from 27 inch to a smartphone. Previously, developers would have to develop a test, run it through a number of different screen sizes, find errors, redevelop and test again.

This process can be extremely time consuming. Now with Optimizely X, test changes are seen in real time cutting development time down dramatically.

Speed up development with less errors

Optimizely X comes with a new feature which allows for easier customisation of separate variations within an experiment. Originally when creating an experiment that has more than one variation, each of these variations would use the same global css file.

This meant that to give a specific variation unique styling you would need to give it additional extra classes. Now with Optimizely X individual css exists for each variation, making it easier and safer to ensure css does not affect multiple variations. It is a small change but it provides some much appreciated quality of life.

Synchronous and Asynchronous loading

By default Optimizely Classic only allowed all tests to be loaded synchronously or asynchronously. Essentially what this means is that if tests are loaded synchronously they are executed sequentially as the page is loaded or all at the same time.

Synchronous loading is helpful when you want to prevent page flicker as it will prevent the page from displaying until all elements have been loaded in, whilst asynchronous is good for preventing page load delay due to all elements and scripts being loaded synchronously.

What Optimizely X brings is the ability to define which change need to be loaded synchronously and which ones asynchronously. It’s a huge leap in optimising different kinds of changes. –

What this means for testing programs

Increased velocity

With the new release Conversion Kings are predicting a 30% decrease in development time, which is great news for retailers as they can now get more test running for less. Conversion Kings are currently A/B testing Optimizely X and Optimizely Classic to report on the time saving

Increased throughput

With greater ease to review and fix bugs in a test, we expect to see shorter time for clients to approve tests as the screen size compatibility issues will be a thing of the past.

Better Quality

With an improved results page and statistics engine, we can now develop better hypotheses as the data you base your ideas on is now more accurate and easier to understand.

More time for Implementation

With development process being streamlined, there is now more time in the day to ensure that winning tests are rapidly implemented into production so the performance uplift can be recognised in the cash in back.

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