Why We’re Excited About Optimizely’s CMS SaaS Product
I was excited to learn that Optimizely recently released a content management system software as a service (CMS SaaS) offering, aka a “headless CMS.” If you’re familiar with my career, you know why I’m remarking on this news. But if you aren’t, here’s some backstory.
More than a decade ago, I joined a small CMS company called Ektron. That was eventually bought by Accel-KKR and merged with Episerver. Ektron faded away after the Episerver CMS was adopted by the company and most of Ektron’s customer base. Later Insight Partners acquired Episerver, and then Episerver bought Optimizely and rebranded itself.
Eventually, I left Optimizely, but their fundamental CMS offering hadn’t changed while I worked there. Optimizely’s announcement marks their first new CMS offering in over a decade, which is why it’s special. So, I wanted to look at what Optimizely has announced about this new CMS SaaS offering and then share my thoughts on how it will impact the industry.
Optimizely’s SaaS CMS Features
Headless Site Configuration
Revolutionize content strategy by developing your content centrally and delivering it across channels.
Multiple-Website Management
Save time and money by controlling all your sites, microsites, and channels from one unified platform.
Channel Management
Run your entire content ecosystem — website, landing pages, and blog posts seamlessly within one intuitive interface.
Multi-Language Management
Create and preview content in multiple languages.
Content Modeling User Interface (UI)
Easily structure your content by defining how different content types interact and flow for maximum impact.
Optimizely Graph Integration
Import content from any source and create efficient content queries to optimize search and navigation.
Customizable Styling Options
Take complete control over the look and feel of your website with customized fonts, colors, layouts, and more, directly in the Visual Builder UI — all without needing a back-end developer.
Custom Elements
Build reusable components like buttons, banners, or hero sections you can create and manage both in the UI and code, providing maximum flexibility to your marketers and front-end developers.
Template Management
Create reusable website templates for different page types — landing pages, product pages, blog posts, etc., and easily update all those instances with a single edit.
Interactive Preview
See your website come to life as you edit! Make changes and instantly preview them on the screen, exactly how your visitors will see them.
Element-Level Interaction Preview Mode
Test forms, buttons, and other interactive elements before publishing. Interact with these elements just as your visitors would on your live website.
Customizable Multi-Step Workflows
Design content approval processes that perfectly match your team's needs.
Optimizely Graph
Search, Query, or Publish Content Everywhere
Deliver content to any channel — website, apps, and more.
Semantic Search
Search by content type, title, keywords, or metadata and find the content you need quickly and easily. Save valuable time with this intuitive search functionality.
Content Sources
Pull content and data via Optimizely Graph from external sources like product catalogs or customer relationship managers (CRMs) directly into your website.
Edge Delivery
Deliver your content via a content delivery network (CDN) to ensure global availability at a blazing-fast speed.
Powered by GraphQL
A standardized query language that's powerful yet simple for data fetching.
My Thoughts on Optimizely’s CMS SaaS Offering
Optimizely is a new player in the headless CMS market but has a deep history in the CMS space overall. Traditionally, headless CMS vendors only provided an interface to edit content without the context of the channel. This lack of preview mode hindered their offerings, and they have since added it. Out of the box, Optimizely offers its preview mode (Visual Builder).
I’ve worked with the beta of this new product and can see how the Visual Builder aligns closely with design strategies, like the custom elements feature. Optimizely has also introduced a concept called “blueprints.” Think of these as templates but with prepopulated content. Once used, that content is detached, meaning that if changed, it won’t affect other instances where the blueprint is used. These features in the Visual Builder give content authors more flexibility and power to build digital experiences.
Optimizely has also added a semantic search engine, which is exciting. This is accessible and abstracted by Optimizely Graph, which allows Optimizely to perform maintenance, or changes as needed. The feature lets users searching for content find it quickly because it will interpret the meaning of the words and phrases they use. A common example is the search for football in the U.S., which may have different meanings than soccer in a European country. Another example — using phrases like “Optimizely tips for a beginner” to “doing software development using Optimizely SaaS CMS” which would not only match that exact phrasing but also might return results like “Optimizely for beginners” or “introductory development on Optimizely.”
These features make up a fantastic launch, but Optimizely has already planned a roadmap based on feedback from its beta users and MVP community. We can expect future enhancements in template management, user access control around templates and blueprints, and custom routing.
For more information about Optimizely’s CMS SaaS product, visit Optimizely’s site. You can also reach out to us with any questions you might have. As an Optimizely Strategic Partner, we can answer them, and help you explore whether their headless CMS offering is right for your organization.