Episerver Digital Experience Platform (Epi DXP) announced today a significant rebranding effort is underway. Episerver and Optimizely, as of September 2021, will become known as “Optimizely.” Episerver acquired Optimizely in 2020. After announcing the acquisition in 2020, Epi conducted market research. The result of the study is the move to the Optimizely brand. While Episerver’s brand recognition in North America is growing, this rebranding effort will leverage Optimizely’s brand recognition within larger enterprise organizations.
What is Optimizely?
Optimizely is exceptional because it allows much greater experimentation. Optimizely opens up the field of what can be experimented on. No longer limited to singular pages or a green button or a red button with Optimizely, you can change steps in a user journey. The experiments do not have to be permanent, and the Optimizely interface allows experimentation in a very intuitive way; it’s a drag and drop interface. A what you see is what you get interface makes it easy for anybody to experiment. Machine learning assists with the statistical analysis and analytics factor needed for great experimentation. The combination of Optimizely with Epi pushes what a digital experience platform or DXP can offer to a new level.
GameChanger
The merger of Optimizely and Episerver provides clear differentiation. Competitors in the space like Google Optimize are similar to Optimizely but lack the web content management backbone that Episerver provides. The marriage of Epi with Optimizely lets CMS editors expand what is possible in a single platform. Early efforts by Epi and Optimizely to merge capabilities are already showing promise. Epi AB testing and “self-optimizing blocks” are limited to point-to-point changes; now, with Optimizely integrated, Epi has baked in multivariate testing. With expanded workflow testing provided by Optimizely combined with product recommendations (formerly Peerius) combined with content recommendations (formerly Idio) Episerver is now a clear market leader. So all of a sudden, one can test the workflow or user journey and CMS editors can push a workflow change with a machine-generated personalized content or a machine-generated personalized product recommendation. This is game-changing. With the union of the two platforms and the previously acquired product and content recommendation engines, there is now no other DXP player that has these capabilities baked in.
As a digital strategy leader, it is inspiring to see the accelerated growth at Episerver Optimizely. These new tools and integrations very much expand “the possible”.
Image Credit: “‘Experimento de Torricelli : efecto de la gravedad atmosférica’.” by Biblioteca Rector Machado y Nuñez is marked with CC PDM 1.0
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