Unifying a Fragmented Product Ecosystem
The Challenge
Following multiple acquisitions, Optimizely faced significant fragmentation across its product suite. Sixteen independent products, each with distinct logins, APIs, and UX patterns, created friction for customers and limited cross-selling opportunities. Customers struggled with integration challenges, including managing multiple logins, inconsistent navigation, and the inability to effectively leverage powerful features—such as using AI to analyze experiments or dynamically create and optimize content variations.
The technical challenges were substantial: products lacked consistent APIs, had divergent SSO capabilities, and employed incompatible navigation systems. Visual hierarchies and UX patterns varied dramatically, making any straightforward integration approach impossible. These issues impeded customer satisfaction and prevented Optimizely from realizing the full potential of its unified product strategy.
The Strategy
Each product had it's own set of challenges, from lack of APIs and consistent user experience to supporting different SSO needs.
As part of the broader "One Optimizely" vision, I helped shape a critical strategy to create a unified experience that demonstrated tangible progress toward product cohesion. After analyzing the ecosystem, I established key strategic priorities:/p>
- Unified User Access: Establish a centralized login experience, enabling customers to access all products seamlessly with a single set of credentials, supporting robust SSO options
- Scalable Unified Navigation: Create a scalable navigation system to consistently support diverse use cases, reduce customer friction, and simplify cross-product interactions—particularly addressing scaling problems our partners encountered managing multiple accounts and product instances
- Product Integration & Cross-Selling:: Provide foundational technical consistency (common APIs, unified UX patterns) to enable cross-product integrations and unlock AI-driven use cases like intelligent experimentation analysis and targeted content creation—also identify strategic opportunities for product-led growth and cross-selling
I determined that this initiative would require each product to integrate with a new centralized platform while adopting a common design language, navigation system, and terminology – a significant undertaking that would need careful alignment across multiple teams.
The Process
I initiated the project through a series of hands-on, cross-functional design sprints—personally facilitating sessions and actively contributing initial design concepts and prototypes to guide strategic discussions. My early prototypes clarified direction and enabled the design team to build out more detailed solutions collaboratively.
The project coincided with a company-wide rebranding initiative, creating both a challenge and an opportunity. All 16 products needed to be rebranded simultaneously with the marketing launch, which provided the perfect catalyst to introduce architectural consistency improvements.
We began with a cross-functional design sprint to gather requirements from all product teams and explore potential shared solutions. Key outcomes from these collaborative efforts included:
- A scalable hierarchical navigation pattern within a newly conceived “Global Bar,” developed specifically to address customers’ navigation frustrations and account-switching complexity
- An integrated “product switcher,” embedded within the Global Bar, simplifying navigation and clearly communicating users’ positions within the ecosystem
- A two-tiered navigation structure, designed explicitly for customers managing multiple geographic or regulatory (PII-related) accounts, with intelligent menu filtering for scalability
- Standardization of critical system functions (help, support, user profiles) consistently located within the Global Bar for intuitive access
Once the rebrand launched, we developed the next phase—an integrated "product switcher" within the Global Bar that would serve dual purposes:
- Provide easy navigation between products and accounts
- Function as a breadcrumb-style hierarchy showing the user's current location within the product ecosystem
For partners and customers managing multiple accounts, I facilitated the design of a two-tiered menu system with intelligent filtering. I also directed the redesign of products using the Global Bar space for primary navigation, shifting them to vertical menus in the left sidebar to create consistent hierarchical patterns.
Throughout the process, I faced significant stakeholder challenges including alignment on solutions, scoping issues, and balancing the timing of all teams based on individual skillsets and competing roadmap priorities. I addressed these challenges by maintaining consistent communication, demonstrating early value with prototypes, and strategically phasing the implementation to accommodate team constraints.
To solve login fragmentation, I championed the implementation of a unified authentication portal. This strategically critical decision resolved longstanding customer frustration by consolidating multiple logins into a seamless, cohesive experience.
The entire process required several phases of intensive cross-functional collaboration, systematically addressing integration gaps across the product suite.
The Results
The new unified experience initially launched with select beta customers, immediately garnering overwhelmingly positive feedback—particularly regarding simplified multi-account management and seamless product navigation. Optimizely prominently featured this solution during the keynote at the Opticon annual conference, publicly demonstrating the company’s commitment to a cohesive, integrated product ecosystem.
Beyond customer satisfaction, my work on this platform provided crucial infrastructure for Optimizely's product-led growth strategy, enabling more effective cross-selling and establishing the foundation for deeper product integrations in subsequent releases. By successfully navigating competing priorities and technical challenges across 16 different products, I delivered a solution that transformed a fragmented ecosystem into a cohesive user experience.
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