Member experience re-design
Context
When retailers want to increase or generate organic User Generated Content (UGC) for new products, Bazaarvoice will send products to targeted members in Influenster's 7.5M+ community (Influenster is another product in the Content Acquisition Services (CAS) portfolio). The objective of this is to influence or encourage more people to buy their products. Clients can use the Bazaarvoice network to specify a number of audience attributes, for example, where members live, their age or their gender. Members will leave reviews through the Members app.
The problem
Members are given 30 days to write reviews, but the review completion rate was relatively low, and the completion rate for attached media upload was even lower. There was also an expectation that members would post photos of their products on their Instagram grid or as a post on Facebook. I needed to understand how we could better influence members to leave reviews so that retailers would receive better results from their campaigns.
My role
I carried out the Discovery work and created the designs.
Process
User research
I carried out user interviews with 5 of our most engaged members, 5 less engaged members, and 4 retailers.
Synthesis
From the user research, it became clear that whilst retailers want high quality UGC, they want it through reviews, not on social media. Thankfully, this better suits members who feel reluctant to post on social media. The social media aspect to the members app was added as an assumption that it was important for retailers to receive social media content from members. However, when retailers set up campaigns, they don't view as part of their social strategy because they typically have a team that focuses on that side of the business.
Social posts can be deleted. Today that represents a complex challenge wrt reporting as many members often delete their posts before we are able to provide client reports and therefore we give clients less content and display lower completion rates as well.
Rights management on social media adds legal complexity especially when dealing with private accounts, deleted posts and deleted rights usage comments.
Social platform API changes can impact our feature capabilities (e.g. recent meta API access restriction prevented users from posting to Instagram) and is more complex for members to post (as evidenced by the number of IG related support tickets and low IG task completion rate).
Members who aren’t on social media (for a variety of reasons like privacy) were disengaged, and we should better cater to all members so that they can still participate in these campaigns.
Images can be created for functional or inspirational use cases, depending on if there’s a need to train members for either use case. IG posts only cater to inspirational use cases.
Retailers want UGC that is
- inspirational
- impactful
- educational
Social posts can be deleted. Today that represents a complex challenge wrt reporting as many members often delete their posts before we are able to provide client reports and therefore we give clients less content and display lower completion rates as well.
Rights management on social media adds legal complexity especially when dealing with private accounts, deleted posts and deleted rights usage comments.
Social platform API changes can impact our feature capabilities (e.g. recent meta API access restriction prevented users from posting to Instagram) and is more complex for members to post (as evidenced by the number of IG related support tickets and low IG task completion rate).
Members who aren’t on social media (for a variety of reasons like privacy) were disengaged, and we should better cater to all members so that they can still participate in these campaigns.
Images can be created for functional or inspirational use cases, depending on if there’s a need to train members for either use case. IG posts only cater to inspirational use cases.
Retailers want UGC that is
- inspirational
- impactful
- educational
User insights
Members
Members don't like posting product photos on their Instagram grid because they feel the photos ruin the aesthetic and goes against the personal nature of the platform, especially when they didn't like the product they received
Members tend to feel uncomfortable posting this type of content as they are conscious others may think they are being insincere, which defeats the purpose of creating organic content: they think Stories are more effective
Members don't always write reviews because there is no consequence if they don't i.e. they will continue to receive products from other brands whether they have written reviews for previously sent products or not
Retailers
Retailers are not concerned about members' social content because they get better reach and engagement using dedicated influencers who can spend time creating professional and high resolution photos
Retailers use focused social media counterparts as part of their strategy because they only want to use content generated through the members app to post on their PDPs or other pages on their site
Retailers' primary focus for the members app is to generate lots of ratings and reviews because they believe this is a more enticing way to generate more sales, however, they want members to upload images with their reviews
UI decisions
Existing UI
The current flow is built using an iframe which can be white-labeled by retailers to suit their branding.
The UI was considered outdated and had a poor user experience as it took members considerable effort to move through it.
The UI was considered outdated and had a poor user experience as it took members considerable effort to move through it.
Updated designs
Process
Internal research
Gathering feedback on the filters from Fullstory, Productboard, emails and relevant folders was important to do before beginning to re-design the filters.
I annotated all of the filters so that the feedback was collected in one place, and so that other relevant designers and engineers could better understand the design issues.
UX research
Fullstory
Users are rage clicking to get rid of pills instead of clicking 'clear all,' and that there is a lot of inconsistency with the copy across the filters (this has been influenced by individual teams making their own changes instead of using the Aperture Design System.)
Our enterprise clients are using many 'Saved filters': one is using 150 saved filters. This exemplified their importance
Users don't know if components are clickable or not, buttons aren't functioning properly, there are invisible overlays and there are broken elements
User interviews
I spoke with various product teams internally to gauge specific needs in relation to their product to ensure that we are incorporating all user needs into the filter as the Date and Product pickers are used across several products. I also carried our a number of user interviews with a mixture of enterprise and SMB clients.
Outcome
This project in still in flight, but I am working on high-fidelity prototypes that will be used for user testing.
I have been working with Client Success Managers to identify clients who would be keen to test the new filter design. I will ask clients to complete tasks in order to gauge if the filter is easy to use in order to complete complex tasks. I also plan to partner with a dedicated Aperture copywriter to ensure all copy is consistent and comprehensive across the filters.
Once user testing is complete and appropriate changes have been made, I will create design tokens and work with Engineering to build the filters.
I have been working with Client Success Managers to identify clients who would be keen to test the new filter design. I will ask clients to complete tasks in order to gauge if the filter is easy to use in order to complete complex tasks. I also plan to partner with a dedicated Aperture copywriter to ensure all copy is consistent and comprehensive across the filters.
Once user testing is complete and appropriate changes have been made, I will create design tokens and work with Engineering to build the filters.
Date picker
Product picker
