Simplifying the Path to Product Value
LEAD DESIGNER
OCT 2024
Andy Houston, CCO:
“Fleur's work on simplifying the onboarding process for service area businesses was particularly impressive. By using both qualitative and quantitative measures, she was able make changes to improve the volume of adding a location, a key metric, for these types of businesses by 3x.”
PROJECT SUMMARY:
Led end to end design process from user journey mapping to prototyping and testing
Redesigned user experience of location onboarding for Service Area Businesses
Increased the conversion rate for SAB user group by 3x overnight
Generated over £200,000 in additional annual revenue
Customer Support Complaints: 0
BUSINESS CONTEXT:
BrightLocal is a platform that helps marketers beat their competitors in Local SEO. It attracts a diverse user group and this particular project affected our Service Area Business customers. By definition, Service Area Businesses are those operating without a physical storefront but instead, servicing an area such as a massage therapist or a plumber. In 2024, it had become increasingly apparent by the rise in daily customer support enquiries involving service area businesses not being able to successfully add a location to the platform that this needed solving.
USER PROBLEM:
Service area businesses were struggling to add a location to the platform confidently, which in turn, was impeding their ability to discover product value quickly enough in our platform. This key action was leading to a high customer churn of this user group as a result.
KEY CONSTRAINTS:
01 Whilst there was endless possibility for a UI redesign, due to time constraints this was highlighted as a project for a later stage.
02 Due to technical debt, the 'Add a Location' onboarding wizard was a complicated project from an engineering point of view which called for close collaboration with the engineering team.
TIMELINE:
Below is an overview of the project timeline and which UX/UI activities were conducted at each stage of the process.
SOLUTION OVERVIEW:
Design the happy path for every user group to add a location in a way that is intuitive and frictionless, helping them to discover BrightLocal value as early as possible.
Happy Path Design
Design the happy path for every user group to add a location in a way that is intuitive and frictionless, helping them to discover BrightLocal value as early as possible.
Make Every Word Count
To apply our design principle 'Make Every Word Count' by cutting down the lengthy copy currently in the 'Add a Location' wizard.
Keep It Consistent
Ensure that any changes were consistent with other areas of the platform.
HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPE:
MEASUREMENT & TRACKING:
Before this project, we had no tracking infrastructure in place to measure the success of our location wizard and without baseline metrics, we couldn't quantify the impact of our improvements or make data-driven decisions. I therefore worked together cross-functionally to set this tracking up pre-release with the PM, Engineering Lead and Data & Insights Analyst.
IMPACT METRICS:
By redesigning the happy path for Service Area Businesses, we saw the conversion rate jump post release, quite literally overnight. As well as generating additional revenue per location added, we helped users see the product value quicker which in turn improved the overall churn.
Increased the conversion rate for SAB user group by 3x overnight
Generated over £200,000 in additional annual revenue
Customer Support Complaints: 0
KEY LEARNING:
01 MEASURING IMPACT
Good product design can directly translate to improved business metrics however without tracking it's very difficult to measure success!