News, insights and resources for leaders in digital experience optimisation.
We've been getting hands-on with the Optimizely CMS 13 preview, and the headline for marketing and digital product teams is this: it's not just a technical upgrade. It's a meaningful shift in how quickly you can move, how much you depend on developers, and how well your content performs in an AI-driven world.
Netcel, has been named the winner of the Optimizely Opal Innovation Challenge 2025, with a breakthrough that reimagines how organisations understand their audiences: Virtual Focus Groups - intelligent agents that reflect real customer segments, critique content, and provide instant, meaningful feedback directly within your content operations/creation workflow.
The latest Forrester Wave™ for Digital Experience Platforms (Q4 2025) reveals a fascinating shift in market dynamics. While Adobe holds the "Customer Favourite" designation and Salesforce leverages its massive installed base, it's Optimizely's approach that offers the most compelling vision for where the industry is headed.
On 12 November, Netcel continued its commitment to developing digital skills in young people by taking part in BIMA Digital Day 2025. Lead Front End Developer, Allyn Thomas hosted the day for the fifth year, supported by Senior Front End Developer Wesley Moore and Marketing & Sales Graduate Ryan Connor, at Parmiter’s School in Garston. Together, the team delivered a thought-provoking workshop designed to spark curiosity and enthusiasm for the digital sector.
Every so often, a research report comes along that doesn’t just deliver data—it holds up a mirror to where digital experience truly stands. Forrester’s new Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study on Optimizely One feels like one of those moments.
At Opticon 2025, Optimizely showcased how Opal AI is evolving into a market-leading platform for agent orchestration, powered by customisable workflows. With the flexibility to design workflows of interconnected AI agents, the release of a suite of out-of-the-box agents, and the opportunity for partners like Netcel to create specialised agents tailored to specific use cases, Optimizely has firmly positioned itself as an AI-native Digital Experience Platform (DXP).
What happens when five Netcel OMVPs bring AI, creativity, and a dash of competitive spirit together? At the Opal Hackathon 2025, our team rolled up their sleeves and pioneered two new Opal-powered tools designed to deliver real value for digital marketing teams.
Digital discovery is going through another big shake-up — and this time, it’s being driven not by an algorithm tweak, but by a fundamental change in how people (and AI) search, decide, and act.
The Netcel DX-Pulse is a quick way to check if your organisation’s digital experience is future fit. It helps CIOs, CMOs, and digital product teams uncover the gaps they can’t always see and prioritise the next moves that matter.
It seems that everyone is talking about AI these days. The conversation is loud, ambitious, and often a little overwhelming. But beneath all the noise, there’s a much quieter truth emerging—AI can be both a manageable and a positive opportunity if approached in the right way
Personalisation is often cited as the holy grail of digital experience. In survey after survey, marketers report high confidence in their ability to personalise content—Optimizely, however, would argue that confidence is misplaced. According to industry data, 85% of businesses believe they are delivering personalised experiences. Yet in practice, what many are doing amounts to nothing more than basic segmentation
The Bridging the Digital Execution Gap report draws on the experience of more than 350 Digital Leaders. This research looks at the challenges that typically hold organisations back as well as addressing how the successful ones are keeping pace with evolving customer expectations, constantly evolving technology advancements, and a dynamic economic landscape.
Personalisation gets talked about like it’s a feature — something you plug in and switch on. In reality, it’s a way of working. And more than anything, it’s a form of experimentation. If you're starting to build a personalisation practice — or trying to improve one that’s underwhelming — it helps to reframe it not as a “thing to deliver,” but as a discipline of learning: trying something specific, based on data, observing what happens, and adapting accordingly.
Personalisation can feel overwhelming—too much data, complex tools, and big promises that are hard to deliver on. In fact, 63% of digital marketers say they struggle to create tailored experiences. This webinar cuts through the noise. Register for our upcoming webinar to explore a clear, practical approach to personalisation using Optimizely.
As customer expectations rise and omnichannel strategies become the norm, headless and hybrid headless content management and digital experience platforms are defining the future as the core of modern digital architectures - offering agility, scalability, and future-proof technology. But what does this shift really mean for your organisation?
How do you prove the return on investment (ROI) of digital? This is a challenge many organisations face—especially in sectors where digital value isn’t immediately transactional. In our recent Netcel webinar, Dom Graveson, Director of Strategy, tackled this crucial topic with Stephen Fairweather, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Charles Russell Speechlys (CRS), who shared an insider’s view on how the firm has transformed its digital measurement strategy.
Optimizely has officially been named THE Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Experience Platforms. This achievement reinforces Optimizely’s position as the top choice for organisations looking to optimise their digital strategies, drive meaningful engagement, and achieve measurable business results.
In 2025, challenges for digital marketers have intensified, with higher demands for more precise measurement, faster adaptability, and smarter collaboration. Whether it’s the growing pressure to justify ROI, the complexity of integrating new technologies, or the relentless need to innovate, a value-first approach has never been more critical. This article contains pointers to get thinking about.
This year, Netcel celebrated 10 years of involvement in BIMA Digital Day, continuing our mission to inspire the next generation to explore exciting opportunities in digital careers. On November 13th our COO, Becky Crouch, and Senior Developer, Dave Johnson, stepped out of the office and into the classroom at Parmiter’s School in Garston. They led an engaging, hands-on session which aimed to spark curiosity and enthusiasm, encouraging students to explore the exciting opportunities in the digital sector.
At Opticon London, Netcel had the privilege of hosting a panel discussion, How to Bridge the Digital Execution Gap: Insights from Netcel and Mace. In the session Jamie Vickers, Operations Director at Mace, joined Netcel’s senior team members, Dom Graveson, Strategy Director, Justin Masters, CTO and Tom Denbigh Commercial Director - to explore the key foundations for successful digital transformation.
At Opticon London, Optimizely’s annual conference in London, we were delighted that Netcel was recognised with the top award - the highly coveted Optimizely UK Solution Partner of the Year 2024. This prestigious award is in recognition of Netcel’s expertise and commitment to driving continued success for our clients and realising the potential of Optimizely’s market leading DXP technology.
The core purpose for Optimizely launching their SaaS CMS remains the same, to provide their end customers with an architectural choice. However, the choice is not always quite what it seems.
On Monday, April 22nd, we join the global community in honouring the 32nd Earth Day, a time to reflect on our planet’s wonders and our role in preserving its beauty. It’s a time to celebrate our commitment to environmental sustainability and a chance to share our journey towards a greener future.
Optimizely One is the world's first operating system for marketing and digital teams. It connects everything from planning and content creation, to layout and publishing, to testing, personalisation, and analysis — all in one place.
If you apply this to the context of delivering your digital goals, you can test out your hypotheses and measure these as leading metrics, while your lagging metrics might take longer to indicate change. Experimentation is a powerful way of testing these hypotheses in rapid cadence, enabling you to demonstrate value fast, often in a matter of weeks, and generate some positive stories to engage and inspire support for your digital programme.
In today's challenging economic climate, taking a serious approach to measuring value can be a powerful launchpad for bringing your organisation with you on the journey of digital transformation and evolution. In this article, Dom covers the different ways we can measure Digital Value.
Do you want the insights from top analysts but short on time? Netcel’s CTO, Justin Masters, has done the heavy lifting for you! In this article, Justin shares insightful analysis of the report, breaking down key takeaways, from AI advancements to Optimizely's top spot as the leading DXP.
In the third article in the series titled 'A Value-First Approach', Dom Graveson, Netcel's Director of Strategy & Experience explores how you can create a Value Framework that's uniquely reflective of your business or organisations needs.
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital experience technology, adaptability and flexibility have become key for organisations seeking to stay ahead of the proverbial curve with solutions that can adapt to their evolving needs.
Netcel CTO, Justin Masters shares key takeaways and insights from his experience attending Optimizely’s Opticon conferences in both San Diego and London, where Optimizely, through the theme of the intersection of art and science, unveiled a key new product, their future roadmap, and a vast array of insights.
In the second article in the series titled 'A Value-First Approach', Dom Graveson, Netcel's Director of Strategy & Experience explores how we define digital value across the fundamentals of revenue growth, cost savings and organisational capability.
International Men's Day, observed on November 19th each year, International Men’s Day celebrates worldwide the positive value men bring to the world, their families and communities. Highlighting the positive role models and raise awareness of men’s well-being. The theme this year is “Zero male suicide'.
On the 8th of November, three members of the Netcel team were lucky enough to be invited to Parmiter's School in Garston, to take part in BIMA Digital Day. Allyn, Lead Front End Developer, Rebekah, Experience Consultant, and Pedro, Junior Front End Developer spent the day sharing insights into what it is like to working in the world of digital, to inspire the next generation of digital talent.
Fresh from a hugely enjoyable and successful experience as gold sponsors of Opticon London - the annual showcase conference from Optimizely - the icing on the cake for Netcel was to be announced as winners of the Customer Choice Award in the Optimizely 2023 Partner Awards.
In the first article in the series titled 'A Value-First Approach', Dom Graveson, Netcel's Director of Strategy & Experience explores the importance of having an effective framework to measure and prove the value of digital initiatives.
Everyone is talking about digital experimentation, and rightly so. It is the cornerstone of building continuously improving digital products and experiences. Where once we would build a digital product and consider it ‘finished’, we have now a deeply established approach that involves continuous iterative optimization and improvement based on analytics, feedback and other data.
Shiny new features are always well received, however it’s always good to step back and consider what they mean at a higher level and where they can make a difference to both our day-to-day digital operations as well as the experiences we deliver with the Optimizely platform.
In an era characterised by rapid digital transformation, there is an imperative for enterprises to redefine and continuously optimise their digital experiences to stay competitive. As organisations pivot toward enhancing their online presence and digital customer interactions are to achieving business objectives, the role of Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) has never been more crucial.
It is impossible to ignore the remarkable growth and innovation in the headless CMS market over the last few years. The rising demand for personalised user experiences and the need for omnichannel content delivery is driving this surge in demand.
Creating experiences that deliver value doesn't happen by accident. It only happens by design. This eBook covers the three ways you can design digital experiences that help you deliver value, fast.
Just like a leaky pipe, the causes of user attrition are often difficult to locate and you may not know what to look for. Your marketing team may be doing a stellar job of attracting people to your site, but you’re not maximising your digital investment if you lose them before they complete the transactions that bring you most value.
Two of our valued clients in the legal sector, Farrer & Co and Charles Russell Speechlys, have been confirmed in the top spots in the latest website ranking growth stats from #Digital100. The Digita100 ranks top UK law firms for their digital marketing – across website, social media presence, and other digital marketing effort - and assigns a score based on key metrics such as website traffic, engagement, and search engine optimization.
Upgrading to the latest version of any software is typically considered good practice. However, sometimes upgrades are simple, quick and barely noticeable and sometimes those upgrades are much more substantial, feature rich and require a greater investment of time and effort. So, why should you be considering upgrading to CMS 12 sooner rather than later?
As with designing any UX experience, building great B2B commerce experiences comes down to understanding the needs of the user: their motivations, needs and context. Unpicking their mental models and their jobs to be done are central to this. It’s like a colleague said to me, 'B2B is like B2C, only more so'.
Saturday 22nd April marks the 30th Earth Day, an annual event that promotes awareness and appreciation for the natural world, and encourages people to take action to protect it. We are proud to be supporting Earth Day at Netcel. It is an opportunity for us to raise awareness of the initiatives and activities that contribute to our environmental sustainability targets, a vital part of our ongoing ESG programme.
It used to be the case that, if you knew what to look for, a fake was easy to spot. Typically humans are quite adept at spotting fakes when they don’t seem ‘quite right’. There’s usually some kind of giveaway that prevents you from trusting it. The best fakes make those giveaways difficult to detect, but they tend to take more skill or cost more money. Often both. Gaining someone’s trust is crucial to starting and maintaining any relationship, and the more that relationship requires any kind of financial, intellectual or emotional investment, the more crucial it is to establish, and remain deserving of, that trust.
At Netcel, it’s our mission to build a diverse and inclusive culture and we want to encourage others to do the same. Which is why we are supporting International Women’s Day to #EmbraceEquity amongst women, specifically in the Digital and Technology industry. Currently, women are underrepresented in our industry, with only 5% of leadership positions in the technology sector being held by women. That is why reached out to some of our female clients, partners and employees working in senior digital positions, and asked them to offer their advice and opinions on why women's should consider careers within this industry. Read what they had to say.
If there's one thing we can agree on it's that, when it come to design, everyone has an opinion. We can't help it. There will always be that first impression, the emotional response, that keeps us interested or drives us away. If the design is for something that it meant to be used, that first impression is superseded by a second: does it work? Then a third: is it helpful? And a fourth: Is it easy? This book covers three ways you can design digital experience that deliver the outcomes you're looking for.
Congratulations to Netcel Solutions Architect, Minesh Shah whose expertise and commitment to promoting excellence with Optimizely has been recognised with confirmation of his OMVP status. Achieving this coveted status is a not to be underestimated and is awarded only to those who act as ambassadors and for Optimizely and actively contribute to Optimizely World and Slack communities, blogs, and forums.
Personalisation has become a buzzword in the digital world, and for good reason. It has the power to transform the way businesses engage with their customers, resulting in a more meaningful, relevant and satisfying experience. With the tools readily available to digital marketers today, we can harness data, connected systems and even AI, meaning that personalisation has the potential to go beyond recognising a customer’s name or presenting relevant products and content based on their previous browsing.
Google Optimize has been a great tool for digital marketers and those investing in CRO. The native integration with Google Analytics provided access to behavioural insights making it easier to target segments you’ve discovered using Google Analytics. With Google’s recent announcement that it will be sunsetting Optimize on September 30, 2023, companies are having to search for alternatives to keep their experimentation programs running.
At our recent webinar, we asked our panel of experts from Forrester, Netcel, Optimizely and Siteimprove a question: How to be a Leader in an era of digital evolution? Inspired by the results of a market insights report - From Digital Transformation to Digital Evolution - published by Netcel, Optimizely, Siteimprove and in partnership with London Research, the discussion explores if transformation is an outdated concept. And how organisations can adopt an evolutionary mindset to achieve continuous improvement and better digital outcomes.
For many, creating something 'innovative' is the holy grail in terms of achieving success in business. If I create something new, it will give me an edge over my competitors. This is true, but only sometimes. There are many examples where new and ingenious ideas have failed to find an audience: the Sinclair C5 and the Segway are two famous instances of novel engineering solutions that, in the end, didn't do enough to appeal to potential buyers.
On the 10th of November, three members of our team went back to school for the day to volunteer for BIMA Digital Day, at Parmiter’s School. Phil, Head of Design, Allyn, Lead Front End Developer and Pedro, Junior Front End Developer.
This is the first in a series of short articles discussing a collection of UI components that may be perceived as trivial, but they happen to be very significant. In my experience and when working with other designers, the footer always seems to be one of the last components to be designed. So much UX and UI time is spent on the header, search and navigation along with other high priority content, that the footer can get overlooked. It’s important to get the footer correct.
It is always gratifying to win an award, but as one our team so eloquently put it, “some awards are more worth winning than others”. And this is definitely one of those - to be winners of the Optimizely Customers’ Choice Partner of the Year Award is a fantastic endorsement!
This is the second part in a series where we'll be looking at the role design plays in creating digital experiences that have a positive impact on both business and customer. A phrase we're all familiar with is "Familiarity breeds contempt". Meanwhile, a mantra for product design is "Don't make me think", taken from the title of Steve Krug's excellent book. Together, those two phrases contradict. But when designing a digital experience intended to surprise, delight and empower people, we must balance the new with the familiar.
Netcel are committed to creating accessible digital solutions for our clients and supporting Purple Tuesday is one way of keeping accessibility at the heart of our design practice.
Here at Netcel, we are incredibly proud of our great team. To celebrate that team, we are interviewing different people across the business in our blog series ‘In the Spotlight’ to find out more about them and their journey with Netcel. Next up ‘In the Spotlight’ is Chief Technology Officer, Justin Masters...
For anyone doing something creative, the most exciting point is often at the beginning, when it's just you and a blank canvas. The possibilities are infinite, and the end result is waiting to be discovered. Projects for personal enjoyment or emotional expression allow you to have happy little accidents, but when creating a product that has a specific purpose, the approach has to be much more considered. We must know what the end result needs to be, and how design can help get us there.
The B2B buying landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade, a transformation accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, and proving to have a sustained impact on buying behaviour. To successfully navigate this evolution in B2B buying, businesses need to shift their focus to digital sales channels and elevate the digital experiences that now form a crucial part of the sales process.
Netcel is committed to the highest standard of information and cyber security and as part of our ongoing activity to ensure maximum protection, we have now added Cyber Essential Certification to our security accreditations.
We don’t need to establish whether data is important. This is a given and has been for a long time. It’s firmly understood that data, the right data, can provide a clear view of the past that we can identify learnings from and, in some ways, predict what might happen in the future.
Netcel are delighted to announce our digital project partnership with AF Group, the largest cooperative farm input buying group in the UK.
On June 15th, 2022, Microsoft is retiring its Internet Explorer browser, the once dominant market force that you now use to download a better browser. This is a big step in the web and for us at Netcel, so we had a little send off in the office for our least favourite browser.
Over the past two decades, digital has proved itself to be the theatre for the most exciting, innovative and disruptive commercial and social initiatives to impact how we shop, connect, build relationships, become more efficient and grow our businesses. This report has been designed to take the temperature of where we stand in 2022, after many years of discussing the concept of digital transformation as a strategic goal to enable these benefits.
Over the past few years, behind the scenes at Netcel we’ve been evolving. Outside of Netcel a few people have noticed. But most have not… until now. So for those that hadn’t, here’s a short summary of how Netcel has evolved, why, and what happens next.
It is easy to state 'being data driven' as an objective - but its not always so easy to articulate what this will actually mean.
To mark International Women’s Day, we are celebrating women in Digital & Technology.
The words unprecedented, pandemic, social distancing, pivot, virtual and even a new verb ‘to Zoom’ - are now embedded in our parlance as we find ourselves in a ‘new normal’. But what has been the impact of the Covid pandemic and changing expectations and behaviours of consumers and on the adoption of marketing technology?
Netcel were delighted to be presenting at the recent Financial Services Forum event, The Tech Driven Customer Journey, with our partner Optimizely. With two great presenters - Joey Moore Senior Product Director from Optimizely and Dom Graveson, Strategy and Design Director at Netcel, it was always going to be an engaging and insight packed presentation.
Netcel are delighted and honoured to be named as the winner of the DXP Partner of the Year Award (UK/IE) at the Optimizely 2021 Partner Awards! The DXP Partner of the Year category focuses on the adoption of the Optimizely Digital Experience Platform (DXP) through solution partners.
It is always gratifying when a respected, independent group of subject matter experts and researchers validate something that you already know to be true. And this is where I find myself having read the latest Forrester Wave™ Digital Experience Platforms, Q3 2021 report which was published at the end of July.
On the 10th of November, our Lead Front End Developer, Allyn Thomas and our Marketing Executive, Lorna Johnson, went back to school for the day to volunteer for BIMA Digital Day, at Sir John Lawes school in Hertfordshire.
Optimizely (Episerver) has been named a Leader in The Forrester New Wave™: Feature Management and Experimentation, Q2 2021. Read on to find out how to download your complimentary copy of the report and helpful guide for digital product owners looking to invest in an experimentation platform.
Optimizely (Episerver) recently acquired Zaius, the leading activated customer data platform (CDP). But what is a CDP? And what does this mean to those already using Optimizely (Episerver) user, or considering using it in the future? Netcel's CTO, Justin Masters, explores how Zaius can enable you to create hyper-personalised experience for your customers.
Optimizely (Episerver) has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Agile Content Management Systems, Q1 2021. Read on to find out how to download your complimentary copy of the report and helpful guide for digital product owners looking to migrate to a new CMS.
Gartner has recognised Episerver (Optimizely) as a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms (DXP). We explore the strengths of Episerver (Optimizely), and share why we believe it should make the shortlist of enterprises and mid-markets looking to re-platform.