Building a seamless digital experience: GMHBA’s success with Optimizely One

Background: A not-for-profit with big ambitions

GMHBA is an Australian not for profit health insurance and care company supporting more than 320,000 members on their healthcare journeys. They have served the community since 1934, and with 90 years’ experience, have become Australia’s leading regionally based not for profit private health insurer.

Through their personalised approach and exceptional customer service, GMHBA puts the health and wellbeing of members and communities first. The approach is guided by their philosophy, Healthier Together and decisions are made with members first and foremost in mind.

GMHBA manages two brands: the main GMHBA brand and Frank Health Insurance, which targets younger, digitally savvy customers.

To better serve its customers and modernize its digital infrastructure, GMHBA turned to Optimizely One, a comprehensive digital experience platform that integrates Optimizely’s Content Management System (CMS) and Web Experimentation platforms to drive efficient content management and customer experience optimization.

GMHBA’s journey with Optimizely began in 2018.

The Digital Challenge: Modernizing a Complex Ecosystem

Prior to adopting Optimizely One, GMHBA’s digital operations were hampered by an outdated CMS, which limited its ability to manage content efficiently. The on-premise system required technical resources for even basic content updates, causing delays and creating bottlenecks. The marketing team could not publish content without relying on the development team, slowing down time-to-market for new campaigns. As a result, GMHBA sought a modern, scalable solution that would allow them to empower their marketing team and seamlessly integrate with their existing systems while ensuring scalability and security.

Recognizing the need for a powerful, interconnected platform, GMHBA adopted Optimizely One. This unified solution allowed GMHBA to not only manage content effectively but also create data-driven experiments to optimize customer journeys and improve the overall user experience.

Moving to Optimizely’s cloud functionality has been a game-changer for us. Deployments are easier, and if our internal systems are down, Optimizely is still up.

Caghan Emirzade

Digital Product Manager, GMHBA

Implementation: A collaborative approach

The implementation of Optimizely One in 2018 was a highly collaborative process. GMHBA worked closely with Capgemini, its chosen implementation partner, in a co-creation model. Instead of a traditional hand-off model, GMHBA’s internal development team worked alongside Capgemini to build and integrate Optimizely CMS. This approach ensured GMHBA’s team gained the necessary expertise to maintain and evolve the platform, setting the foundation for long-term success.

Guy Moodie, Head of Digital Product at GMHBA, emphasized that co-creation was a key success factor. By involving their internal teams early on, GMHBA ensured they weren’t just adopting a new system—they were building the expertise to manage it themselves. "The collaboration allowed us to implement Optimizely in a way that was deeply aligned with our needs, ensuring our development team was fully capable of maintaining the system," said Guy Moodie.

Optimizely CMS’s cloud-based infrastructure was a game-changer for GMHBA. By moving from on-premise to the cloud, the organization gained reliability, scalability, and ease of deployment. As Guy Moodie noted, moving to the cloud meant that even if internal systems experienced outages, Optimizely One remained online, allowing the business to continue uninterrupted.

Optimizely is more than just a CMS—it’s a digital experience platform. It’s the foundational building block that allows us to deliver exceptional digital experiences.

Guy Moodie

Head of Digital Product, GMHBA

Empowering the Marketing Team: Efficiency and Agility

A primary goal for GMHBA in adopting Optimizely One was to empower the marketing team to take full control of content management. Prior to Optimizely, the marketing team relied heavily on technical resources to publish even basic content updates. Optimizely One’s intuitive CMS allowed the marketing team to manage content independently, reducing bottlenecks and significantly increasing output.

Guy Moodie explained that this shift not only increased efficiency but also saved resources. The ability for non-technical staff to manage content removed the need for a dedicated content coordinator, allowing GMHBA to reallocate resources to higher-value activities. Additionally, the CMS’s multi-site management capability allowed the team to manage both GMHBA and Frank Health Insurance through a single system, streamlining operations and improving overall efficiency.

With Optimizely’s CMS, GMHBA’s content throughput increased by 40-50%, and the marketing team could now deploy content in as little as 30 minutes, a stark contrast to the previous process. The time-to-market for campaigns improved dramatically, allowing the team to respond to market opportunities with speed and agility.

Additionally, the integration of the Find add-on has provided further operational benefits by significantly improving the performance of GMHBA’s website. The add-on, used primarily for product searches and comparisons, optimized page load times, which enhanced the overall user experience. Faster page loads not only improved user satisfaction but also contributed to higher engagement, as customers could quickly and easily find the information they needed, whether they were comparing insurance plans or exploring GMHBA’s healthcare services.

We saved almost one full time employee by allowing the marketing team to publish content without relying on the digital team. Our content throughput increased by 40-50%.

Caghan Emirzade

Digital Product Manager, GMHBA

Web Experimentation: Building a culture of data-driven decisions

Alongside the CMS, Optimizely Web Experimentation capabilities enabled GMHBA to create a culture of continuous optimization and data-driven decision-making. With Web Experimentation integrated into the Optimizely One platform, GMHBA have moved beyond basic A/B testing to a more sophisticated approach to experimentation. The ability to run experiments, gather insights, and iterate quickly has been central to GMHBA’s digital transformation.

Optimizely One’s Stats Accelerator feature proved especially valuable for GMHBA, which does not have the high traffic volumes of a major retailer. Stats Accelerator intelligently reallocates traffic to the winning variation in an experiment, allowing GMHBA to achieve results more quickly despite lower traffic levels. "For an organization like ours, Stats Accelerator has been invaluable," Guy Moodie shared. "It speeds up the optimization process and helps us make informed decisions faster."

The Stats Engine was another feature that helped GMHBA streamline its experimentation efforts. It provided real-time feedback on experiment performance and highlighted any issues, such as incorrect traffic allocation, ensuring that the team could trust the data and focus on meaningful optimizations.

Use Case 1 – Optimizing UX for landing pages 

One of GMHBA’s early and most impactful experiments using Optimizely One centered on optimizing the user experience for its landing pages. The company’s hypothesis was that presenting too much information upfront in the top of the funnel could overwhelm users and potentially hinder engagement.

To test this, GMHBA decided to experiment by simplifying the landing pages, . Instead, they deferred more granular content—such as coverage specifics and service details—to later stages in the funnel, after users had shown initial interest by engaging with the primary offerings.

The experiment ran for 100 days to ensure that sufficient data was collected across all landing pages, given GMHBA’s relatively lower traffic volumes compared to larger companies. Despite the extended run time, the results were clear: removing excessive information from the landing pages significantly boosted click-through rates. Users were more likely to continue through the funnel when the information was presented in a digestible format, with detailed content provided when it was most relevant, later in their decision-making process.

This experiment not only validated GMHBA’s hypothesis but also played a crucial role in shaping their broader optimization strategy. It highlighted the importance of serving the right content at the right time to users. By adopting this approach, GMHBA could ensure that customers remained engaged throughout their journey, increasing the likelihood of conversions. The insights gained from this test helped inform future optimization efforts, leading to a more streamlined, user-friendly digital experience across the company’s web properties.

The success of this experiment demonstrated the power of Optimizely’s Web Experimentation capabilities, enabling GMHBA to drive data-driven improvements that significantly enhanced the overall user experience. The ability to efficiently run experiments and receive actionable insights allowed the digital team to iterate and refine their strategy, setting the stage for continued digital innovation.

Screenshot of old GMHBA landing page

Screenshot of new GMHBA landing page

The Stats Engine made us smarter. It eliminated a lot of noise from our tests and helped us rely on the data. Also, Stats Accelerator has been a godsend for us, especially given our lower traffic volumes. It helps us get results faster and optimize our customer experience.

Caghan Emirzade

Digital Product Manager, GMHBA

Future Plans: Expanding the use of Optimizely One

Looking forward, GMHBA has ambitious plans to further leverage the capabilities of Optimizely One. A key focus over the next 12 to 18 months will be moving to CMS 12, which will provide enhanced functionality, including better personalization and digital asset management. This upgrade will enable GMHBA to further streamline its content processes and deliver more personalized experiences for both GMHBA and Frank Health Insurance customers.

Additionally, GMHBA is planning to continue its work on funnel optimization, using Web Experimentation to refine both the acquisition and retention processes. Funnel optimization will play a critical role in improving conversion rates and customer engagement, as the company looks to drive further growth in a highly competitive market.

The company also plans to expand its multi-brand strategy, further integrating GMHBA and Frank Health Insurance under a unified digital experience. By leveraging the shared logic within Optimizely One, GMHBA will enhance the efficiency and consistency of its digital operations while maintaining the unique identities of each brand.

Conclusion

GMHBA’s adoption of Optimizely One has been transformative. The integrated CMS and Web Experimentation platform has enabled the organization to improve content management, streamline operations, and drive a culture of continuous optimization. Optimizely One has empowered GMHBA to enhance its digital experience, optimize the customer journey, and remain agile in an ever-evolving market.

As Guy Moodie noted, "Optimizely One is more than just a CMS—it’s a complete digital experience platform that allows us to optimize our customer journeys, empower our teams, and continually drive growth."

By leveraging Optimizely One, GMHBA has positioned itself to remain at the forefront of digital innovation in the health insurance industry, delivering seamless, personalized experiences that meet the evolving needs of its members.