Google Optimize has long been a go-to testing and personalisation tool for organisations looking to improve their user experience and drive better business outcomes. However, with the recent announcement that Google Optimize will be sunset, many organisations are left wondering where to turn next.
Today's article will cover several factors to consider when choosing your new testing tool to deliver similar functionality and results, exploring both the customer and agency take across the board.
The Feature Set – What’s in the box?
The feature set is one of the most important things to consider when businesses search for a new testing tool. It's essential to look for a tool with a comprehensive feature set that aligns with your business goals and needs - a crucial consideration to factor in when looking to find success in personalisation. Some key features include easy experimentation setup, segmentation, targeting, and easy integration with other experimentation or analytics tools in your tech stack.
Looking at the feature set from an agency perspective, working to meet your clients' specific and ever-changing needs can often be hampered by a tool's shallow feature set. When weighing up your options, account for future growth and needs, and ensure your new tool has the bandwidth to accommodate that.
Ease of use – Easy-Peasy Lemon Squeezy
Another important consideration is the ease of use. The new tool should have a user-friendly interface and a streamlined workflow that requires minimal technical expertise. For customers, a tool that's easy to use means they can start testing and personalising their website quickly, all with minimal training.
From an agency perspective, an easy-to-use means less time spent on setup and more on analysis and action. Nothing is truly better than onboarding a new client with a tool that can check all these boxes.
Performance and Reliability – Keep the trains running on time
Critical factors when considering anything, not just your experimentation tool, is performance and reliability. The tool should be able to handle large traffic volumes, provide fast load times, and offer consistent uptime to ensure that experiments run smoothly and correctly. In addition, a reliable tool should put the customer's nerves to rest, enabling them to run tests confidently without worrying about website downtime.
While these factors are a must from both customer and agency perspectives, a reliable tool also means that more complex tests can be executed, consistently, and without worry for the tool's capacity–a matter of utmost importance for any agency looking to deliver experimentation programmes on-mass, at scale.
Integration – Try baking a Cake with a Little Tikes First Oven
As mentioned briefly before, your tool's integration capabilities within your tech stack should play a focal role in the decision-making process. For example, can it connect with your analytics platform, CRM, and other marketing automation services?
Important to both parties, integrations provide a more holistic view of your customers' behaviour and needs, helping users make more informed decisions. Diving further into the agency perspective, these integrations work to provide a more comprehensive view of the customer journey, allowing teams to understand customer behaviour better and ideate more data-driven hypotheses.
Analytics and reporting – Gone are the days of pouring through a messy CSV file
Also, important considerations are analytics and reporting. For customers, reports that are easy to understand and customise can help them better understand test results and make well-informed, data-driven decisions.
For agencies, comprehensive analytics and reporting allow us to provide more valuable insights to our clients, aiding in easy communication across the knowledge gaps.
Cost – Money Talks
Cost is, and always will be, a leading consideration behind every business decision, especially when selecting a new testing tool. A pricing plan that aligns with budgets while providing necessary features and functionalities is important. Looking at it from the customer perspective, affordable pricing means they can better allocate resources to testing and personalisation while also providing a better overall ROI.
Looking at things from the agency perspective, an affordable pricing plan can help provide a more affordable service to their clients, resulting in a better overall ROI for any winning experiments.
Customer Support – Please don't leave a voicemail after the tone
Lastly, we have customer support, an essential factor in any testing tool's success.The tool, through multiple channels including email, phone, and chat, should work to ensure any issues or concerns, from both customer and agency, are addressed quickly and effectively.
From a customer perspective, great customer support means they can resolve their issues, quickly, and continue testing away on their website. From an agency perspective, good customer support the same haste in resolution is vital to ensure they can deliver a service their clients are satisfied with.
In Conclusion...
Google Optimize's discontinuation has left businesses searching for alternative tools across the board. However, by considering the factors mentioned above: feature set, ease of use, performance and reliability, integrations, analytics and reporting, cost, and customer support – businesses can find a tool that meets their needs, helping to achieve their goals. For the agency folk, these factors allow us to provide our clients with continued excellent service while improving their website's user experience and driving better business outcomes.