Content creation can be slow. But this is no reflection on the teams creating content.
If your organisation is serious about investing money in its digital platform, ROI isn't a side conversation. It's the conversation.
Digital leaders understand the pressure. It’s not enough to say the platform is live, secure, and ticking along nicely. Finance Directors will want numbers. Leadership teams will want to know if the investment is delivering an impact before sanctioning further spend.
We see similar frustrations surface repeatedly:
Technology isn’t the constraint here. Optimisation is.
At Mando Group, we work with enterprise teams to turn digital platforms into engines driving commercial results. Optimizely often features strongly in that story because it leads the market in experimentation and optimisation, but the principles below apply to any serious Digital Experience Platform (DXP) investment.
This article provides a practical framework you can use to prove ROI today and build a stronger case for future investment.
Leadership teams don’t care how many features you’ve switched on. They care about what changed because you switched them on.
Most platforms come with an intimidating amount of capability. You will not get equal value from all of it. Trying to use everything usually guarantees you optimise nothing.
The first job is to be clear on the problem you are solving. Is it:
Once you know that, map platform capability to business outcomes.
| Business Objective | Platform Capability | Measurable Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Increase conversions | Web and feature experimentation | Uplift in leads or sales (e.g. +10–15%) |
| Get content live faster | Workflow and content operations | Reduced campaign and release cycles |
| Lower acquisition costs | Personalisation and targeting | Improved engagement and ROAS |
| Increase customer value | Product or content recommendations | Higher AOV and repeat purchase |
| Improve decision‑making | Real‑time testing and analytics | Faster, evidence‑based prioritisation |
The credibility comes from the before‑and‑after story. Baselines. Deltas. Real numbers. That’s what shifts the conversation from technical update to strategic impact.
Be selective. Focus your effort where the commercial pain is sharpest.
Many organisations still treat their platform like a publishing tool. That’s understandable, but it leaves a lot of value on the table.
Modern platforms now span content, experimentation, commerce, personalisation, data and decision intelligence. Optimizely is a strong example here, with experimentation and optimisation baked into the core of the product rather than bolted on.
The question isn’t “what modules do we own?” It’s “where does value unlock first for us?”
For some teams, that’s experimentation and evidence‑based prioritisation. For others, it’s reducing content bottlenecks or improving commercial performance through personalisation.
Our experience is consistent: deeper, more focused adoption leads to faster time to value and clearer ROI reporting. Spreading effort thinly does the opposite.
Very few organisations roll everything out at once. That’s fine. What matters is a prioritised roadmap that brings new capability online when it will deliver the fastest return.
Optimisation is a sequence, not a big bang.
If you want confidence from leadership, you need a commercial narrative that holds up under scrutiny.
The formula is simple:
ROI = (Value Created – Cost of Ownership) ÷ Cost of Ownership
The discipline comes from being honest about both sides.
Value created might include:
Cost of ownership should include:
Support this with operational metrics:
Platforms with strong experimentation and analytics capabilities make this far easier, but only if they are configured with measurement in mind from day one.
Even with the numbers, expect challenge. Typical questions include:
The strongest answers are practical:
If your current support model can’t give you this level of clarity, that’s a risk worth addressing.
“The site is live and stable ” is not a Board update.
A digital platform is a long‑term investment in capability. Capability only matters when it’s converted into results.
Position your platform as a growth engine, not a line item.
A stronger leadership update looks like this:
That reframing changes the question from “are we doing enough?” to “how do we extract more value?”
Buying the right technology doesn’t guarantee results. Strategy, measurement, and relentless optimisation do.
Optimizely stands out in the market because it puts experimentation and optimisation at the centre of the platform. But the real differentiator is how clearly an organisation connects capability to commercial outcomes.
At Mando Group, we work with teams who want to prove value, improve performance, and scale what works. If your platform investment isn’t delivering what it should, the answer isn’t more activity. It’s better focus.
If you want an independent view on where your ROI is coming from and where it’s leaking, we should talk.