Business impact
Helped add 25m ARR through new bookings and saved red accounts
NPS and CSAT
+11% and +20%
Time on Task
-41%
Screens and Clicks Reduced
~30%
Role
Timeline
Multiyear / ongoing
Brief
Leadership invested in this project because despite our large market share, we weren't a leader in the space when it came to our overall UX and we were losing deals to simpler and more modern experiences. Users felt like we weren't investing in core products and solving real problems. User error due to poor UX also led to several large red accounts.
So what's broken?
1. Too many ways to create a message causing confusion and frustration
2. Lack of parity between these various workflows
3. Dated user interface that was inefficient
4. Various features existed elsewhere in our system and weren't readily available at time of creation
5. Current WYSIWIG editor is subpar and doesn't have space or features to use
Where do we start?
Early Concepts
Used low-fidelity designs to validate our hypotheses about layout and new features.
We ran moderated research sessions through Zoom.
Not single persona
Rarely is it the same user/persona who is creating the content AND sending a message within large enterprise marketing teams.
Task Lists
Users liked having a list of tasks to complete before sending.
Transparency
Users liked having more visibility into where they stood in the process with clear navigation and flow completion tracking.
Layout
Users were mixed on vertical vs horizontal wizard navigation.
There were concerns from leadership that the workflow was still too many screens and the changes we were proposing based off of research weren't "radical" enough to compete. So I created several user journey maps to illustrate to leadership a comparison between current state and proposed state on the difference in number of screens, context changes, and clicks. This helped us move forward in a united fashion once leadership better understood the meaningful impact we were creating for users and that a certain amount of complexity was necessary and desired for our most common personas and use cases.
Wireframes - First Draft
We ran moderated research sessions through Zoom. At this point research was being run on a regular cadence with usually 2-3 session groups per quarter.
Centralized Features
Users were ecstatic to have features for validating links, test sending emails, and checking rendering for various ESPs and resolutions in one place instead of spread throughout the app suite.
Getting started
Users sometimes felt lost when beginning the workflow and needed better affordances and UA language
Wireframes - Final Version
We ran moderated research sessions before and after every release.
Autosave
Users liked having autosave with clear visual cues for when a save event was happening. A future desired enhancement was save history and reversion.
Full Screen Editing
Canvas space for editing the message continued to be a high priority so we gave users an option to expand the canvas fullscreen when desired.
Visual Designs
Business impact: helped add 25m ARR through new bookings and saved red accounts
NPS and CSAT: +20%
Time on Task: -41%
Screens and clicks reduced: ~30%
Results and Reflection
The most important thing we learned was we couldn't combine these two workflows due to cognitive overload for users and differing personas. This created the challenge to make the sending and creation experiences feel cohesive while still existing separately in the application.
Ultimately we created a huge improvement in the NPS and CSAT scores when it came to sending and creating emails. We also help save some red accounts and increase new bookings in conjunction with other changes in the Marketing Cloud.
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