VWO (or Visual Website Optimizer) is one of the providers we review in our Growth Marketing Platform article as a provider as a true growth marketing platform provider. The software is made by the Delhi based SaaS software company Wingify.

The Visual Website Optimizer Platform

Whilst we are only reviewing the VWO Plan product here, the Visual Website Optimizer platform comprises of a range of 9 products (shown below). To support a growth marketing strategy however the workflow would be to gather observations (using VWO Insights), turn these observations into hypotheses (using VWO Plan), and test your hypotheses (using VWO Testing).

Product	Overview
VWO Testing	VWO Testing helps you run powerful A/B, multi-variate, split, multi-device, and multi-page tests on your website to turn your visitors into paying customers.
VWO Insights	VWO Insights helps you identify bottlenecks and opportunities in your website visitors’ purchase journeys.
VWO FullStack	VWO FullStack gives you the server-side flexibility to run omnichannel experiments with deep segmentation capabilities without any performance impact to build consistent, higher-performing experiences.
VWO Engage	Think beyond emails and leverage new-age channels. Keep your visitors engaged with automated marketing campaigns.
VWO Plan	With VWO Plan, your teams can collaboratively discover growth opportunities in your visitors’ journey, build a pipeline of high-impact experimentation ideas and see them all the way to completion.
VWO Services	Optimize better and grow faster with the help of VWO experts.
VWO Deploy	Minor edits? Adding new sections? Complete website revamp? VWO Deploy can get your job done without involving developers.
VWO Personalise	Build tailored visitor journeys with personalization. Deliver unique journeys to the right audience, at the right place, and at the right time.
VWO Data360	Collect, aggregate, and enrich your customer data in real-time with VWO Data360. Ensure data quality and enforce governance across all channels to optimize experiments, personalize buying journeys, and fine-tune marketing campaigns.

What is Visual Website Optimizer Plan?

VWO Plan is provides functionality for collecting and managing ideas to improve website performance.

“With VWO Plan, your teams can collaboratively discover growth opportunities in your visitors’ journey, build a pipeline of high-impact experimentation ideas and see them all the way to completion Warner Music Group increased their testing velocity by 3X using VWO. So can you.

https://vwo.com/plan/

VWO Plan includes 3 core pieces of functionality, we’ll dive into each of these below.

1. Observations
2. Hypothesis
3. Ideas

Visual Website Optimizer Plan features

1. Observations

VWO Observations is an area to collect and manage your insights and observations. Observations are things you have seen or experienced that you believe could help to improve your website or application experience. Observations can then be tested by creating a hypothesis (see below).

Use Observation to collect data on user behavior that can help you understand the motivations and apprehensions of visitors on your website.

Observations are the basis of identifying common patterns or problems that can eventually lead you to potential optimization opportunities. You can create Observations that can be used to record the motivations or apprehensions of your visitors. Link one or more observations as evidence to construct your test hypothesis.

https://app.vwo.com/#/plan/observations

For more information see What are observations in VWO and related articles. Observations can also be added using the VWO chrome extension, further information below.

2. Hypotheses

Hypotheses enables you to manage and prioritise testing ideas, in a similar manner to Growth Method and other growth marketing platforms.

Build a hypothesis to describe a proposed change and the potential impact of that change on your website conversions.

For example, you assume that increasing CTA button size and changing colors attract more Signups. To test this hypothesis, you would run a campaign and set up your goals to test if your assumptions are true. Manage a hypothesis to qualify, prioritize, test, and learn from it.”

https://app.vwo.com/#/plan/hypotheses

New hypotheses are entered in a structured format, prioritisation is based on the ICE framework (Impact, Confidence and Effort) and no other prioritisation frameworks are available. A strong point is the need to tie a hypothesis to an existing observation.

Hypotheses are stored in a Kanban-style view with 5 stages defined by default, although these are customisable:

• Backlog
• Selected for Testing
• Testing
• Completed
• Archived

For more information see Hypotheses in VWO and related articles.

3. Ideas

The ideas section (branded the “Idea Factory”) includes Ideas Gallery, Case Studies and Resources and Articles. At the time of writing 66 ideas filterable by e.g. industry, implementation time and element tested.

Note many of the ideas seem rather dated and lack detail and in-depth content, with a number of the ideas being a single screenshot with 1 or 2 lines of supporting text.

VWO Chrome Extension

The main function of the VWO Chrome Extension is the ability to add observations from anywhere.

“If you notice anything interesting on your website, quickly make a note and create an observation. The observation is saved along with a screenshot of the page and can be referred to whenever required.”

VWO Chrome Extension

Using “Observation Mode” with the plugin allows you to click on any area of an online website or app, and to add an observation to your VWO account quickly and easily.

The Chrome extension also offers two additional smaller benefits:

1. The ability to download heatmaps
2. To overcome compatibility issues with the VWO visual editor

Final Thoughts

Keep an eye on our Airtable database below which we update in real-time.

Got questions? Ping me on LinkedIn or on Twitter.

Other articles you might like

Here are some related articles and further reading you may find helpful.

• In-depth Effective Experiments review 2023
• In-depth review of Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) Plan 2023
• The rise of the growth marketing platform in 2023
• TrueNorth growth marketing management software reviewed
• Why marketing project management is more important than your tech stack