Optimizely provides digital experience platform software as a service, A/B testing and multivariate testing tools, website personalization, as well as web content management and digital commerce. Their solutions empower teams with the tools and insights they need to create and optimize in new and novel ways. The company was acquired by Episerver in 2020 and in January of 2021 Episerver announced that they were re-branding the combined company as "Optimizely".
Following Episerver's acquisition of Optimzely, Vertic was tasked with combining both company's digital experiences. With key objectives of the website becoming an enabler for scalable business growth, as well as helping move Optimizely more ‘up-market’ with larger companies and brands, Vertic derived a vision and strategy that would create a new website with lead-generation and lead maturation as a core focus.
"We are seeing immediate impact following our successful digital transformation, with an entirely new front-end visual design, digital customer journeys and back-end architecture. 120 days. 80+ stakeholders. 6,000+ pages of content. And the business outcomes are impressive! Thank you for your continued partnership in our digital-first growth strategy."
Deliver a superior website experience that communicates the leadership of the new company and drives tangible business impact.
Initial discussions with Optimizely showed that there was a three-pronged objective with the website. Firstly, a brand objective that required the website to create a superior experience for both new and existing customers, which would communicate the new value of the joint company. Secondly, there was a commercial objective that necessitated high visitor engagement, focusing on capabilities to create future business revenue through both better lead generation and lead qualification. Finally, there was an operational objective that required a more decentralized content editing experience to improve time-to-market opportunities.
A deep period of customers insights enabled us to recognize four distinct personas that the website would have to cater towards outside of the traditional corporate website users such as career seekers. Use cases were built across these personas, guiding the creation and prioritization of business-critical Optimizely.com sections.
A subsequent content strategy informed Vertic and Optimizely of what pieces of content should be updated, what pieces could be discarded, what pieces were missing. This data-driven process of digital insights enabled Vertic to speed up time-to-market by making clearly defined recommendations for the website rather than leave decisions to the emotional assumptions of stakeholders.
Given the increasing recognition from third-party analysts such as Gartner, Forrester and IDC on the combined company's technology offering, Vertic and Optimizely decided that the website should showcase what the product could do.
A process of agile scoping in batches was then performed to understand the roll-out of the website. With a promise to the market that the combined companies would be wholly and solely operating under the Optimizely brand alone by August 2021, Vertic had a six-month window following the strategy with which to launch.
Vertic’s creation of the new Optimizely.com focused on key sections that were known high-traffic driving areas. A new home-page was able to showcase Optimizely’s leadership from first-touch and increase conversion to relevant areas of the website that align with the user’s stage of their information journey. It was able to simultaneously communicate to existing customers the combined company’s new value as well as highlight content for new customers that would drive consideration.
As web experimentation is one of Optimizely's key value offerings, Vertic used Optimizely's experimentation product to build the site. By leveraging front-end A/B and multi-page testing, the Optimizely site is able to deliver targeted messaging, personalize offers, and recommend the most relevant content to users.
New navigation focused on driving users to the correct products and plans that analytics and surveys had previously shown were tough to find. A new ‘Insights’ section of the website focused on positioning Optimizely as a true thought-leader in the DXP market.
The products and solutions pages leveraged the Optimizely technology stack by personalizing relevant introductions to different products within the portfolio, subsequent content consideration materials, and hard/soft calls-to-action.
Lead generation was optimized through clear USPs on content download pages, with highlighted and personalized ‘what happens next’ information when requesting demos.
