New HP Optimost Release Includes Cloud-Based A/B Testing

HP Autonomy’s new version of Optimost, a Web optimization product, now includes self-service A/B testing.

HP Optimost VisualTest, a new module that became generally available earlier this week, lets marketers test combinations of digital content by market and customer segment. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering lets marketers open any Web page, mobile site, or email in a design tool to create and run tests.

“VisualTest is a new module that enables marketers to create tests in minutes,” says Gabriele DiPiazza, vice president of marketing and marketing optimization at HP Autonomy.

Its features include a more user-friendly design tool that lets non-technical users create A/B tests, as well as global, single-tag deployment that prepares multiple pages for testing with a single line of code to speed the testing process.

The company says its product goes beyond most online testing tools that only compare click counts between pages. HP Optimost VisualTest lets marketers bring to bear intelligence from marketing systems and third-party sources of demographic or behavioral data.

Marketers can apply data from multiple sources, as well as access the advanced analytics capabilities of the HP Digital Marketing Hub. The hub, launched in October 2013, is an open system that lets businesses use data and analytics from a variety of sources, including Experian, BlueKai, and Marketo.

“This is a very crowded market,” DiPiazza acknowledges. “We don’t believe there is one single vendor that solves all the problems. We want to be as open as possible to fit in data from multiple sources.” That openness extends to connecting to other companies’ marketing clouds, as well. The platform already has integrations with ExactTarget, for example.

While some HP Autonomy products are available as both SaaS and managed services, VisualTest is a cloud-only service, available for an additional subscription fee above the basic Optimost fee.

“We don’t like to think of the marketing cloud as one monolithic service, but rather as multiple offerings. There are multiple services you can turn on or off and consume based on your business infrastructure,” DiPiazza says.