Today we are excited and proud to announce the finalists of our first annual Optie Awards.

The Opties recognize and celebrate customers who create delightful online experiences for their own customers and empower their organizations to turn data into action. We’ll announce the winners in each category at OptiCon on April 17th. We received an overwhelming number of submissions. It was truly inspiring to learn how our customers are utilizing the Optimizely platform to innovate, drive data into action, and create lasting testing cultures within their organizations. 

Optie finalists were selected based on the following criteria: pursuit of innovation, business impact, demonstrated expertise, thoroughness of entry, and fulfillment of the category’s description. Here is the all-star panel of thought leaders who reviewed and judged all of these extraordinary applications:

• Hiten Shah, Co-Founder of KissMetrics & Crazy Egg

• Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing

• Pete Koomen, Co-Founder of Optimizely

• Dan Siroker, Co-Founder of Optimizely

The Opties are comprised of eight categories that best highlight our customers’ cutting edge use of Optimizely. The categories and finalists for these awards are:

Most Dramatic Business Impact

Awarded to the company who achieved the greatest business impact through testing this year, this Optie can represent big wins across a variety of categories. Whether their company’s aim was to increase leads or revenue, clicks or page views, through testing, they took that goal and crushed it, providing lasting value to their business.

Finalists: Bing Ads, Get Revising, Miami Children’s Hospital, Warner Music Group

Testing Culture Award

This Optie will be awarded to the company who has instilled the strongest organizational testing culture – changing the way decisions are made, teams are structured, and business is done.

Finalists: FoxyCart, Live Nation, Schedulicity

Most Creative Use Case

This Optie will be awarded to the company who has used Optimizely, the most popular A/B testing tool, in the most innovative way, beyond the realm of traditional A/B testing.

Finalists:  alinc Technologies, Chrome Industries, InternMatch

Most Advanced Use Case

Awarded for pushing technical boundaries with Optimizely, this Optie will highlight the company using the most advanced implementations of optimization that go beyond the WYSIWYG editor.

Finalists: Blade Authority, Lyle & Scott, TechTarget

Testing Hero of the Year

This Optie will recognize a testing champion who drove business impact, organizational change, and a data-driven strategy, while also growing their personal career path.

Finalists: Stephanie Liu of RJMetrics, Eric Hanser of Digital Operative, Wordstream

Best Advanced Feature Use

This Optie will go to an organization who uses advanced features to help achieve major corporate wins. Using advanced features like segmentation, targeting, personalization, or mobile a/b testing will get them a chance to win this Optie.

Finalists: CLEARLINK, Kitbag, VeggieTales

Making the Switch

These all-star companies switched from another testing platform and saw tremendous value from doing so.

Finalists: Goltz Group, HomeAway, Rated People

Most Interesting Integration

These customers have integrated us with a complementary platform or service and saw outstanding results.

Finalists: Iron Mountain, CLEARLINK

Please join me in congratulating these truly thought-leading, boundary pushing finalists!

Join us for OptiCon, Optimizely’s first user summit and a must-attend event for anyone interested in website optimization. Register and learn more at opticon.optimizely.com.