Optimizely (YC W10) brings data-driven Web design to the masses | Hacker News Reader

Optimizely (YC W10) brings data-driven Web design to the masses

xconomy.com

46 pointswaderoush9 comments

Nothing against Optimizely (I'll go see what it is after I post), but man I'm getting tired of the cutsey -ly names. This is one fad I wish would fade away.

What's wrong with -ly names?

They do remind me of Ned Flanders - "okely dokely doo!" just a bit. I doubt that's a widespread association but it's what jumps in my mind first.

We got a call from http://hiconversion.co/ recently. They wanted to sell us on their conversion optimizer software. Their site talks a lot about "Real Time ROI" and "IT-Free Use", but no where on the site do they actually describe what they do. I emailed the rep this question and he basically wouldn't tell us. He would only say "I can explain it with a demo." We were curious to see how it worked, so we said yes. Then we had to schedule a time, call up GoToMeeting, enter the passcode, and listen to a 30 minute presentation.

He was a nice enough guy, but my god, all HiConversion had to do was exactly what Optimizely did: put a 4 minute video on their homepage (which I am seeing for the first time today).

The WYSIWYG editing in both systems is pretty similar. The main difference is that I got a quick and easy understanding after four minutes on Optimizely's site.

P.S. The price is significantly better at Optimizely. 30 Day Free Trial and $400/month vs $3,000/month. We'll check out that free trial version at least.

Thanks, glad you like the demo video!

The inspiration for Optimizely came out of similar frustrations when I was the Director of Analytics during the Obama campaign. We went through a long drawn-out sales process with Omniture Test & Target when all we really wanted was a short demo of the product. Hopefully we've done a good job of building a product that is easy to use and understand so we can avoid doing a 30 minute presentation to explain how it works. We're building the product I WISH we had back during the campaign.

We're actually thinking of putting together a series of short videos showcasing different features of the product similar to how Splunk does this: http://www.splunk.com/videos

Is this something you'd be interested in?

I'm a happy paying user. Really dig the site. A few ideas for UI enhancements, but I think this is a great and easy way to quickly test site changes without having to dig into the code or Google Analytics, which makes the process incredibly difficult.

Hi Nathan, glad you dig our site! We're honored to have you as a paying customer. If you have any UI suggestions for the product we'd be glad to hear them. You can email us directly at hello@optimizely.com

Love what Optimizely is doing, keep up the great works guys! I think the A/B testing market is one that'll keep growing for a long time, and tools that make it easier to do will be the catalyst.

Thanks Ian! Are you interested in joining us? We are actively hiring: http://jobs.optimizely.com/

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