FAQ

Why did you decide to build Optimizely Performance Edge?

Website speed matters. Studies show that faster loading websites correlate with better conversion rates and less abandonment. We’ve been on a mission to make Optimizely Performance Edge run faster on your site. Optimizely Performance Edge is the next step forward in our mission to make experiments run blazingly fast on your website.

Do I need to be a Cloudflare customer to use Optimizely Performance Edge?

No. We used Cloudflare to power the decisioning for Optimizely Performance Edge, but we’ve made it possible to integrate Performance Edge with a wide variety of CDNs including, but not limited to, Cloudflare.

Additionally, Optimizely Performance Edge does not require using a CDN. It's designed as an API that can also be used with a serverless architecture or by communicating with your origin server. However, for the best performance, we recommend using a CDN as you will see overall site performance benefits, as well as performance benefits for experiments.

Can I use Optimizely Performance Edge with a serverless system?

Optimizely Performance Edge is compatible with a serverless worker like Cloudflare Workers or AWS Lambda.

Why does your recommended approach hit a first-party endpoint?

Our recommended implementation approach sends a request to your domain (e.g., atticandbutton.com/optimizelyjs123), then a route handler forwards that request to Optimizely Performance Edge. This extra hop seems unintuitive, but actually helps increase page performance and reduce implementation costs. Crossing domains is slow for a browser. When your visitor's browser makes a request from your domain, it gives Optimizely Performance Edge access to header and cookie information that Performance Edge needs for browser targeting, device-targeting, to ensure that a certain variation is delivered, and more -- and it's faster.

Is Optimizely Performance Edge faster than a self-hosted and asynchronous Web implementation?

Yes. Optimizely Performance Edge is faster because it has a smaller snippet and less code to download and execute.

Can I make a Optimizely Performance Edge experiment and an Optimizely Web Experimentation experiment mutually exclusive?

No. Performance Edge uses a different project type from Optimizely Web Experimentation. Mutually exclusive experiments are only supported within projects, so you can't make Edge and Web experiments mutually exclusive.

Can I use Optimizely Performance Edge and Optimizely Web Experimentation at the same time?

No, you cannot run Optimizely Performance Edge and Optimizely Web Experimentation on the same page at the same time. Optimizely Performance Edge is an app (add-on) for Optimizely Web Experimentation that takes a completely different approach to implementation and enables you to run website experiments faster by moving key experiment decisions from the browser to the Edge (CDN layer).

You should use Optimizely Performance Edge for the parts of your website that have the most demanding performance needs and Web for the parts of your site where you need the greatest flexibility to support your experimentation use cases.

I have a custom snippet. Can I use Optimizely Performance Edge with it?

Custom snippets are a feature of Optimizely Web Experimentation and not available in Optimizely Performance Edge. They are designed to reduce the footprint of the Optimizely snippet by breaking it up into multiple snippets that have a many-to-many relationship across projects and experiments.

The Performance Edge microsnippet goes further than the custom snippet from a performance standpoint and contains only the necessary variation content for a specific user. Optimizely Performance Edge helps solve some similar performance challenges as custom snippets in Optimizely Web Experimentation -- but is faster. Custom snippets are also used by some teams to manage permissions and governance.

Does Optimizely Performance Edge work with Program Management?

Yes. You can use Program Management to manage Optimizely Performance Edge experiment ideas and provide visibility across your Optimizely Performance Edge experiments.