CRO Showdown: Adobe Target vs. Optimizely

Testing and experimentation tools provide the capabilities that businesses need to improve the user experience, increase conversions, and figure out the best approach to take. Optimizely and Adobe Target are two options enterprises might consider when it comes to experimentation software, but it can be difficult to choose between them.

Experimentation tools form a crucial piece of the modern martech stack and allow marketers to leverage data to help them select the most appropriate messaging or campaigns to entice customers and boost revenue. With Gartner predicting that 65% of B2B sales organizations will shift to data-driven decision making by 2026, selecting the right experimentation tool is crucial.

In this article we’ll compare Adobe Target and Optimizely so that you can choose the best option for your organization. But first, we’ll explain what you need to know about conversion rate optimization.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. This is typically achieved through techniques such as A/B testing and multivariate testing.

Optimizely and Adobe Target both implement A/B and multivariate testing heavily to test different aspects of your website such as web pages, images, content offers, and more. This will help you determine who your target audience is and what they might respond to.

Now with a better understanding of CRO and the types of testing that can be achieved with either Adobe Target or Optimizely we can see how the two compare.

Meet the Contenders: Adobe Target & Optimizely

Adobe Target

Adobe Target is a rule-based testing and targeting tool that can help brands to customize and personalize customer experience. It can be integrated with other tools in the Adobe Experience Cloud suite, such as Analytics and provide reports for marketing offers, personalization, and UX testing. This feature enables marketers to determine which offers, experiences, and messages are engaging customers.

Optimizely

Optimizely has long offered A/B and multivariate testing capabilities. After being acquired by Episerver in 2020, their offering now includes a fully-featured digital experience platform (DXP) with several tools and features to enhance digital experiences.

Personalization, A/B testing, multivariate and server-side testing tools form part of a modular set of API-first services that help enterprises deliver incredible customer web experiences through constant experimentation and data-driven innovation.

The platform has grown to become a reliable experience-driven platform, with additional features such as analytics, content management, ecommerce, and more.

Adobe Target vs. Optimizely: Feature Comparison

Let’s compare the different features between Adobe Target and Optimizely:

A/B Testing

Optimizely has one of the most powerful front-end A/B and multipage experimentation products built for businesses and enterprises. It is equipped with features such as exclusion groups, allowing you to run multiple experiments on the same page safely. An Optimizely user said that the platform helps in “solving the need to launch and learn from A/B tests, it helps us set easy redirect tests too (for marketing / landing page tests), and it ensures we have a central place to look at results.”

The user however noted that “sometimes there’s a tiny lag between the control and the new variant’s design - it’s very minor, but can look a little off to users. I don’t think it’s meaningfully impacted results.”

In comparison, Adobe Target allows you to A/B test your entire experience, including graphics, copy, UI, and more to find the best experience. The testing method in Adobe Target is designed to examine multiple variations of web, mobile, IoT, and other applications on both the client and server sides. A G2 reviewer talked about how easy it can be to implement A/B testing. According to him, “A/B and testing can be easily achieved through Adobe Target.”

By the way, a G2 reviewer complained that "Adobe Target can cause timing and delay issues if the experience is too heavy to load.”

Multivariate Testing

Multivariate testing is a method for testing a hypothesis that involves changing several variables. Multivariate testing aims to find the variation combination that performs the best overall among all possible combinations.

Optimizely offers a fast, comprehensive web experimentation platform that allows businesses to uncover valuable customer insights and create a high-performing experience with multivariate testing.

Alex B, a G2 reviewer was impressed about how easy it is to edit variations of tests on the platform. She said, “What I like best about the Optimizely platform is the ease of editing the variations to test in the visual editor. It makes it possible to run tests for those of us who do not have extensive coding knowledge.”

Multivariate testing in Adobe Target examines combinations of offers in elements on a page to ascertain which combination performs best for a particular audience and determines which aspect influences the activity's success.

Website Optimization

When a website is optimized, its capacity to promote business goals is increased through controlled experimentation. Website owners use A/B testing to experiment with variations on the pages of their site to see which changes would ultimately lead to more conversions to improve the performance of their website. Fortunately, Optimizely has out-of-the-box tips and tricks that provide the best website optimization for businesses and websites.

Adobe Target is a great tool for website optimization campaigns and experiences. Adobe Target integrates with other Adobe Experience Cloud products and supports A/B, M/V, and other types of testing for user experience optimization.

Personalization

Over time, personalization has proven to be a very customer-centric approach to better customer experience.

Optimizely stands out against other DXP competitors in the area of personalization, because they personalize experience with proven insights on where your customers are coming from and what they most likely do next. This will provide you the utmost confidence in setting up the right marketing strategy and providing the best user experience and satisfaction.

Adobe Target comes with an automated personalization capability that lets you automate targeting and provide personalized content based on real-time data.

A user review on G2 had this to say about Adobe Target personalization, “One of the most remarkable features of Adobe Target is the ability to offer a different web experience based on users’ profiles which allows segmenting your clients depending on their shopping behavior, geolocation, and many other customer types.”

Customer Data

Optimizely offers one-click integrations that combine data from all channels into a harmonized format. The aim of this is to resolve customer identities and provide actionable insights.

Adobe Target has a “customer attributes” feature that deals with information about using enterprise customer data from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) databases to target contents in Adobe Target, using attributes in the Adobe Enterprise Cloud People service.

Why Companies Often Prefer Optimizely

Optimizely is an experimentation tool that assists marketing teams in creating and managing A/B experiments. Using the service’s dynamic features, you can design a range of tests for your website.

Some reasons why Optimizely is often considered the best tool for testing and experimentation include:

• User-Friendly:Consumers love a user-friendly platform that leaves them with the best customer experience, and that is one of the main focuses of Optimizely. It offers ease of editing using a visual editor. This makes it possible for people with little to no coding knowledge to run tests without assistance.

• Practical and Flexible Tool:With a functional and flexible platform, user experience is sure to improve. A G2 reviewer had this to say about Optimizely. “Flexibility and useful analysis of the adoption of the features that we are planning to have in our solution. We are using the audience to measure the success of the features. As far as I can tell, there is no other tool able to provide the features from Optimizely”.

• Simplified Web Experimentation: Optimizely makes web experimentation easy to implement and can be really powerful if you need it to be. The point-and-click web editor makes it easy to set up A/B tests. It can also enable users to add custom CSS and JavaScript.

Choosing the Best Experimentation Tool For Your Martech Stack

Optimizely and Adobe Target are both great, proven tools for testing and experimentation. They are powerful A/B testing and personalization tools that can help companies improve their online presence and increase conversions.

Adobe Target is best suited for larger enterprises with complex needs, such as those in the retail or finance sectors. It offers advanced features such as integration with other Adobe tools, robust targeting capabilities, and the ability to handle high traffic volumes. On the other hand, Optimizely is geared towards smaller to medium-sized companies, especially those in the e-commerce and SaaS sectors.

If you’re interested in getting started in experimentation, don’t forget to consult an experienced partner like Oshyn. 

Oshyn has worked with numerous agencies and businesses to develop, audit, and maintain aesthetically pleasing and fully functional websites. We have helped businesses and enterprises worldwide improve customer experience and manage content effectively.

One such enterprise is TCDRS, who asked Oshyn to work with their design agency to build a three-breakpoint, responsive Optimizely website within a short timeframe. 7 days following deployment, TCDRS’ bounce rate had decreased 42.7%, with the website’s speed and aesthetics no doubt playing a role.