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Aside from just what a solid company Optimizely is, I think that if you read Dan's blogpost you get a hint at the ultimate direction they may be going. "We fi

Aside from just what a solid company Optimizely is, I think that if you read Dan's blogpost you get a hint at the ultimate direction they may be going. "We firmly believe that 10 years from now people will look back at today and be shocked at how generic, impersonal, and one-to-many what we call the web is... We are striving to become the layer on top of the web that powers that experience." I'd guess that Optimizely may be becoming less about page optimisation and more about experience optimisation. Should my navigation and experience at Tesco be the same as that of a mother of four or a student? My recommendations may be personalised but what if the entire experience at the site including the advertising, design and calls-to action could be personalised and optimised for key customer segments. If you've ever used Test and Target you'll know that it can get pretty complicated but equally that that that sort of segmentation can equally have a huge impact. If Optimizely can pull off a way to easily curate site experiences for different visitor segments and perhaps intertwine those experiences with social then they could have some huge topline impact in those companies.

mvartak 14y ago
yeah, i thought so too! The personalization/recommendation space is super crowded though -- it'll be interesting to see how Optimizely tackles it.
- garagemc2 14y ago
  Quite easily. Take a look at Monetate's website. No transparent pricing. Making it clear what the costs is and making the set up ridiculously easy. Exactly the same strategy as they did with A/B testing.
  - jonahx 14y ago
    It's shocking to me whenever I see company nowadays that makes you contact them for pricing.
    - modoc 14y ago
      It is unfortunately a necessary evil of most enterprise sales situations. My company started out by providing clear, public, easy to understand pricing on our website. We quickly discovered that many large companies expect to get large discounts off of "list" price, and even if your pricing is on par with, or less than your competitors, you end up talking to people who say things like "I won't sign anything if I don't get at least 20% off list price". It's a weird weird world. Companies like Oracle who routinely discount 80+% off of "list" set these expectations in the market.
      - jonahx 14y ago
        That actually makes some sense. I feel like they could at least say something like "We are enterprise only product. Pricing varies, but starts at $XXX" Of course I just assume that if there's no price tag, it's going to be high, but still.
      - kerno 14y ago
        From Jason Cohen "This is always how the conversation would go: PM: What kind of discount are you offering? Me: We don’t discount; instead we put our pricing on our website so there’s no misunderstanding. PM: Well I’m going to need some kind of discount. How about 30%? Me: As it says on our website, we don’t discount. PM: But I’m buying 400 seats!" http://blog.asmartbear.com/startups-emotionally-draining.html http://blog.asmartbear.com/startups-emotionally-draining.htm...
  - ramanujam 14y ago
    In enterprise sales, setting a common open price is very hard. If you look at the current offerings of Optimizely, they want to call you if you want to buy a package that is > $360/mo. The reason is, it might be based on the site traffic, level of service you are picking and a few other factors. Also, each sale will have legal contracts that might drag on for months with pitches to several members from the buying organization and negotiations. In addition, your product offerings keep getting better every quarter and you also want to test varying price points, offer discounts and compete well against several competitors in the process. If you are going after a market trying to acquire 1000s of customers paying $xxx/month having a transparent open pricing works great but it doesn't when you are targeting enterprises. Disclaimer: I work for monetate and we do have a pricing page that explains to the buyers on what to expect. http://monetate.com/products/packages-and-pricing http://monetate.com/products/packages-and-pricing. Also, most of the enterprise buyers are used to this kind of setup and putting a price tag on your website doesn't really work.
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      > I work for monetate Looks like you have some serious competition.
      - untog 14y ago
        He still makes some good points though.
marbemac 14y ago
Right, it looks like they're going to build something similar to Monetate http://monetate.com/products/personalization http://monetate.com/products/personalization. There are already high quality, established players in this space. I'm curious to see how they'll differentiate themselves.
- pg 14y ago
  Did you notice the graph in that post? I think you mean to say "I'm curious how they've been differentiating themselves."
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    Without size cohorts that graph doesn't mean much. I'm sure that if you'd have those it would be very impressive but just by itself that graph is not interesting other than to show very good growth and very good future prospects. It's the kind of slope investors like to see :) If optimizely is as well represented in the top 100 and top 1K as it is in the top 10K then that would be a much stronger statement.
    - dsiroker 14y ago
      Hi Jacques, we have pulled together the same data in terms of adoption for the top 100k and top million and they look very similar. A great source for this data if you are looking to dive into it is http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Optimizely http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Optimizely
      - jacquesm 14y ago
        Would it be a lot of work to get that data for top100 and top1000? If it holds there too that would be absolutely awesome.
        jcampbell1 14y ago
        I am not sure how that would make sense. VWO has Microsoft and Groupon, but I am sure it is a tiny portion of their total traffic. What are you really measuring? The thing is we are talking about .5%-3% share here, and the top 100 would be statistically meaningless. What you really want is revenue, and I am sure that is private information. VWO advertises about 2500 customers and Optimizely claims 4000. Frankly, I'd be more interested in how the Google numbers were calculated. It is now so integrated with Google Analytics it is pretty hard to detect. If I were a betting man, I'd guess their revenue run rate is around $10M.

mvartak 14y ago

yeah, i thought so too! The personalization/recommendation space is super crowded though -- it'll be interesting to see how Optimizely tackles it.

garagemc2 14y ago
Quite easily. Take a look at Monetate's website. No transparent pricing. Making it clear what the costs is and making the set up ridiculously easy. Exactly the same strategy as they did with A/B testing.
- jonahx 14y ago
  It's shocking to me whenever I see company nowadays that makes you contact them for pricing.
  - modoc 14y ago
    It is unfortunately a necessary evil of most enterprise sales situations. My company started out by providing clear, public, easy to understand pricing on our website. We quickly discovered that many large companies expect to get large discounts off of "list" price, and even if your pricing is on par with, or less than your competitors, you end up talking to people who say things like "I won't sign anything if I don't get at least 20% off list price". It's a weird weird world. Companies like Oracle who routinely discount 80+% off of "list" set these expectations in the market.
    - jonahx 14y ago
      That actually makes some sense. I feel like they could at least say something like "We are enterprise only product. Pricing varies, but starts at $XXX" Of course I just assume that if there's no price tag, it's going to be high, but still.
    - kerno 14y ago
      From Jason Cohen "This is always how the conversation would go: PM: What kind of discount are you offering? Me: We don’t discount; instead we put our pricing on our website so there’s no misunderstanding. PM: Well I’m going to need some kind of discount. How about 30%? Me: As it says on our website, we don’t discount. PM: But I’m buying 400 seats!" http://blog.asmartbear.com/startups-emotionally-draining.html http://blog.asmartbear.com/startups-emotionally-draining.htm...
- ramanujam 14y ago
  In enterprise sales, setting a common open price is very hard. If you look at the current offerings of Optimizely, they want to call you if you want to buy a package that is > $360/mo. The reason is, it might be based on the site traffic, level of service you are picking and a few other factors. Also, each sale will have legal contracts that might drag on for months with pitches to several members from the buying organization and negotiations. In addition, your product offerings keep getting better every quarter and you also want to test varying price points, offer discounts and compete well against several competitors in the process. If you are going after a market trying to acquire 1000s of customers paying $xxx/month having a transparent open pricing works great but it doesn't when you are targeting enterprises. Disclaimer: I work for monetate and we do have a pricing page that explains to the buyers on what to expect. http://monetate.com/products/packages-and-pricing http://monetate.com/products/packages-and-pricing. Also, most of the enterprise buyers are used to this kind of setup and putting a price tag on your website doesn't really work.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    > I work for monetate Looks like you have some serious competition.
    - untog 14y ago
      He still makes some good points though.

marbemac 14y ago

Right, it looks like they're going to build something similar to Monetate http://monetate.com/products/personalization http://monetate.com/products/personalization. There are already high quality, established players in this space. I'm curious to see how they'll differentiate themselves.

pg 14y ago
Did you notice the graph in that post? I think you mean to say "I'm curious how they've been differentiating themselves."
- jacquesm 14y ago
  Without size cohorts that graph doesn't mean much. I'm sure that if you'd have those it would be very impressive but just by itself that graph is not interesting other than to show very good growth and very good future prospects. It's the kind of slope investors like to see :) If optimizely is as well represented in the top 100 and top 1K as it is in the top 10K then that would be a much stronger statement.
  - dsiroker 14y ago
    Hi Jacques, we have pulled together the same data in terms of adoption for the top 100k and top million and they look very similar. A great source for this data if you are looking to dive into it is http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Optimizely http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Optimizely
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      Would it be a lot of work to get that data for top100 and top1000? If it holds there too that would be absolutely awesome.
      - jcampbell1 14y ago
        I am not sure how that would make sense. VWO has Microsoft and Groupon, but I am sure it is a tiny portion of their total traffic. What are you really measuring? The thing is we are talking about .5%-3% share here, and the top 100 would be statistically meaningless. What you really want is revenue, and I am sure that is private information. VWO advertises about 2500 customers and Optimizely claims 4000. Frankly, I'd be more interested in how the Google numbers were calculated. It is now so integrated with Google Analytics it is pretty hard to detect. If I were a betting man, I'd guess their revenue run rate is around $10M.