With the announcement that Google Optimize and Optimize 360 will no longer be available after September 30, 2023, marketing leaders are hungry to find an alternatve tool to fill the soon-to-be vacant space within their tech stack.
The free version of Google Optimize was long viewed as a risk-free entry point to conversion rate optimization (CRO), while the paid version of Google Optimize 360 was a slight upgrade built for larger enterprises and businesses with higher volume traffic. However, both tools are dubbed beginner-friendly A/B testing options, and largely can’t handle complex customer journeys or scale with fast-growing organizations.
So, as Google Optimize and Optimize 360 phases out, marketing leaders have a unique opportunity to discover a better alternative.
Finding a replacement shouldn’t entail a switch to a tool that is more of the same. Instead, it’s time to evolve with a platform that can scale your business, automate your needs, personalize your content, and help you achieve your revenue goals more effectively.
Evolve your experimentation
Traditional A/B testing lacks speed and scale. It’s a manual, time-intensive process that requires numerous internal resources to strategize, ideate, deploy and measure.
Due to the manual lift, results with A/B tests are spotty. In fact, 6 out of 7 A/B tests fail, making it nearly impossible to move the needle on your goals.
But what if you could change that?
Adding AI into the testing process not only eliminates manual-effort, but handles experimentation in a fraction of the time it would take a human - with significantly better results.
Scale
With manual experimentation, it’s only manageable to run 1-5 tests a month, because it requires a multi-step, cross-departmental, orchestrated process to:
- Ideate a test
- Create assets for multiple variables
- Run A/B tests to significance
- Review results
- Act on the insights
Because of scope creep, delays in reporting, changes in priorities, manual error, lack of traffic to generate insights, etc… it’s impossible to scale traditionally A/B testing strategically. And as many marketing leaders know, without scalable processes, lost revenue and wasted effort abounds.
The speed and scale of AI is not constrained by these limitations.
With AI, you can run thousands of concurrent tests across the entire customer journey and thousands of variables, assessing which ideas generate results in real-time; discover new segments (patterns and pathways in the data that were previously not explored and therefore impossible to see or act on); and build on what you learn for continuous optimization and growth. With AI there are no gaps in findings - or in revenue.
Automate
Static A/B testing isn’t an accurate measurement process that can iterate and improve over time. Instead, it is an experiment where two different versions of a campaign or a piece of content are tested against each other to discern which performs better.
AI-driven experimentation, on the other hand, builds the combinations for you. It automates the decision about what to test and where, by adding or removing variants in a live optimization, culling poor-performing combinations, and generating new combinations.
AI is not only fast to find the best-performing combinations, but as the platform learns what creates conversions the technology will automatically deploy winning combinations to your traffic in real-time, even if those experiences change day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, or annually. Kickstarting AI-experimentation, alongside a managed service provider, can mean a “set it and forget it”, passive form of revenue generation for your organization.
Personalize
No visitor on your site is just an average visitor. And no visitor wants to be treated as average. That makes personalization mission-critical for organizations looking to separate themselves from the competition.
With insights from AI-driven experimentation, it becomes easier to take action on your data and deliver targeted messaging, personalized offers, and recommend the most relevant content for your users across the entire journey.
Ready To Evolv to AI?
As Google Optimize fades into the sunset, look toward the future with technology that can help you meet this year’s company goals more sophisticatedly.
1. Create a North Star vision
Whether your organization looks at its North Star every quarter, semi-annually or annually, having a clear vision of your purpose, ambition, future winning position, and transformation points—both in strategy and in ways of working—is essential for continued growth. In 2023, many organizations are including customer experience (CX) as a major component of their north star - learning new ways to articulate purpose and create experiences that delight the marketplace. Data suggests that improving CX is the fastest path to growth, showing an average 10% increase in revenue when brands dedicate efforts to providing an optimal experience.
2. Strategic plan
How does an increased focus on CX translate into revenue lifts? As you calculate your reverse funnel and identify your target revenue goals, you must tie in the CX tactics you will deploy to get there. How does conversion rate optimization and personalization fit into your mix?
For example, if you are prioritizing lead forms, demand generation or website conversions on your site, but you have a high bounce rate, or low ad engagement do you know how to fix it? As you shed Google Optimize or Optimize 360, consider the gaps the current experimentation programs left in your strategy. If you run more tests per month, you can get to answers much faster. How can you pivot into a technology that enables intelligent digital experiences that will move the needle?
3. Work with our team
Evolv AI is a fully-managed service, with dedicated CRO specialists to help with strategy and ideation and AI-scale. Our team can help you uncover conversion rate opportunities across your website and products with high impact, discover the fastest path to value, prioritize roadmap initiatives, and develop data-driven experiments that will help you obtain your the outcome you hope to achieve, using your custom KPIs as the metric to show how well we’re doing to obtain your North Star.
And, as you phase out of Google Optimize or Google Optimize 360, our team is offering complimentary migration services to get you kickstarted on building AI into your digital experience.
