First Line Software is a premier provider of software engineering, software enablement, and digital transformation services. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the global staff of 450 technical experts serve clients across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
The role of a marketer is continuously expanding with the constant introduction of new channels to reach customers and prospects and the added expectation of a fully personalized experience. Add to that the pressure of doing more with less and it can easily be overwhelming.
That’s where smart technology tools and platforms come in – to simplify and automate retail digital marketing functions that deliver highly personalized customer experiences for increased engagement and conversions.
Enter Optimizely with its easy-to-use Digital Experience Cloud™ platform that combines digital content, commerce, multichannel marketing, and predictive analytics in one unified solution to enable experience-driven commerce. The Optimizely (Episerver) platform provides everything clients need to manage their content, catalogs, data, and payments for multiple sites and channels across multiple countries. New content can easily be launched – without involving IT.
Optimizely has incorporated the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and statistical analysis to facilitate and automate the delivery of personalized experiences, individualized searches, and product recommendations. Whether you want your content to be personalized according to segments or individual users, the digital experience is automatically optimized in real time for all users.
Analysts agree that Optimizely is a leader
Forrester has reported that the Digital Experience Cloud by Optimizely (Episerver) reduces work for developers, content creators, and marketers, freeing up their time to focus on designing improved user experiences and reaching more customers at scale. As a result, Forrester has validated that Optimizely clients achieve increased conversion rates and higher average sales, with less manual input. From a cost savings and revenue viewpoint, Forrester reports that content and product management updates are reduced by 50%, cloud-hosted CMS/digital commerce generates significant savings over on-premises-based solutions, and AI-based personalization engines and campaign management produce incremental revenue uplift. This independent study by Forrester concluded that Optimizely (Episerver) customers can get a 443% ROI over 3 years.
Learn more: What is Optimizely and Why Do You Need It?
When Gartner conducted their research to prepare the 2018 Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management, they concluded that the usability experience is more positive for both business users and IT because of its focus on making life easier for marketers and merchandisers. Many of the advanced experience management capabilities such as AI-based personalization and customer journey analytics are incorporated into the typical CMS and digital commerce processes instead of requiring IT involvement and specialized expertise. Finally, because the subscription pricing is simple, transparent, and predictable, it appeals to both large enterprises and growing midsize companies.
Optimizely-approved implementation partners are key
While the Digital Experience Cloud has a significant amount of built-in functionality, it does require customization to maximize how those capabilities help each Optimizely (Episerver) client in meeting their specific retail digital marketing and commerce objectives.
As a result, Optimizely has built up a broad base of implementation partners that work with clients to customize the platform, add business-specific capabilities, and integrate it with their other business systems.
First Line Software is proud to be an Optimizely Implementation Partner. We work directly with businesses or collaborate with other Optimizely (Episerver) Partners to provide full-service consulting on customizing any part of the Optimizely solution.
Its 100 qualified consultants, including 30+ Certified Optimizely Developers (the largest number in Eastern Europe), integrate the Optimizely-based backend with other systems and applications and use proprietary software to efficiently migrate content to the Optimizely solution. When clients require other functionalities to be added, their requirements are assigned to the First Line team of expert software developers.
Given that Optimizely is a leading .NET platform, it is much easier to develop and integrate additional functionality. As a Microsoft Certified Partner for Application Development, First Line has accumulated a significant amount of experience from the delivery of hundreds of .NET-based projects across a number of industries. This expertise is confidently applied to their work on Optimizely (Episerver) implementations.
Opportunities for digital transformation
A key aspect of First Line’s Consulting Practice is identifying opportunities for retail digital transformation and advising Optimizely customers on how to use the Digital Experience Cloud to transform their businesses into all things digital truly. First Line uses its significant experience of collaborating on Digital Transformation initiatives to guide its clients on how they can adopt business models that facilitate nimble adaptation to industry trends and amazing digital experiences.
Partner success stories
First Line has worked on numerous Optimizely (Episerver) installations, including retail, pharmaceutical companies, a nationwide media group, and a marketing services provider.
- In a project for a major pharmaceutical company, First Line collaborated with another Optimizely Partner to customize their instance of Optimizely to allow website visitors to easily search for information linked to specific conditions such as suggestions for food and liquid intake, tests to isolate the condition and recommendations for the most effective medications, including known side effects. First Line also provided localization of content on multiple sites.
- For a nationwide media group, First Line implemented the Optimizely (Episerver) platform and used its proprietary solution to migrate content from over 60 websites to the new solution while preserving the look, feel, and URL structure. As a result, the media group managed to significantly reduce the maintenance costs for the online presence thanks to the solution created by First Line.
- First Line customized a marketing platform to facilitate order placement, invoicing, payment acceptance, and inventory management for a marketing services provider.
To learn more about the expertise and value First Line can add to your Optimizely implementation contact us to explore the possibilities of how customization of an Optimizely installation can deliver meaningful cost savings while driving increased revenues.