Context

At Q4, our Website Management Application enabled Investor Relations Officers to make updates to their Investor Relations Websites using a form-based experience. By providing information using a standardized form, customers could stage, preview, and publish updates to their website within minutes, using the newly automated Express functionality.

If the automatically staged update didn’t meet customer expectations, or the customer was unsure about the information to include on the form, they could reach out to our support teams manually make the update on their behalf.

Identifying there was a problem 

During my continuous review of CSAT responses across the entire application, and review of audit logs of their submitted updates, I noticed a theme emerging related to customers having difficulty self-serving to add Press Releases (News) to their IR website. Customers were often reaching out to support for help, causing frustration due to delays in customer updates.

• Customers sometimes provided the date they wanted their press release to be published, not when it was actually released to the wire. This resulted in the incorrect date being displayed on their website.

• Attachments were being added using unexpected paths, resulting in these attachments not appearing where they expected. This resulted in attachments displaying on incorrect locations on the customer's website.

• Customers were also unsure which selection to make on the form to provide URLs to external sources. This often resulted in confusion and support outreach.

• Hidden or confusing UX resulted in customers not being able to discover the correct way to link their News headline to an external site. 

The core problem

When reviewing the data, over 60% of News updates submitted using Express automation resulted in support intervention and automation disqualification. This turned a self-serve update that should take a customer minutes into a back and forth email conversation with support that often took hours to resolve manually. This was frustrating our customers, and costing the business in support hours.

Considering our team’s goal of full automation for Express updates, requiring no support intervention, it was clear there was an opportunity to investigate.

Clarifying customer problems

• A deeper review of 100+ individual pieces of customer feedback
• Analyzed 20+ audit logs and user session replays using  Posthog 
• Collaboration with Customer Service Managers and conducted 8 customer interviews to gather feedback

Deeper analysis of customer feedback revealed more clear insights and common themes:

• Cognitive overload: There are a lot of form fields for this one website update, and not all fields are relevant to each customer’s needs. Customers felt the need to fill in each form field, even if it wasn’t information they normally included in News items published on their site.

• Misunderstanding date field: Customers were unsure whether the news date  should be the date that the update was published to their site, or whether it should reflect the News release date.

• Confusion managing  files and links: The primary “PDF version” file upload naming convention was mismatched from the allowed file types, which included more than just PDFs. This caused confusion for customers. Customers had difficulty understanding which form fields corresponded to different parts of their website, resulting in files and links provided being staged in unexpected places on their website.

• Hidden UX to link the headline: The user experience was unnecessarily complicated, and customers often missed the tabs in the UI that allowed them to link their headline to an external site. 

Advocating for improvements

• Conducted a workshop with Product Manager and Engineering teams, identifying technical limitations to consider
• Identified an opportunity to reduce overall support costs by up to 7%
• Presented findings to Director of Product and Director of Design
• Highlighted potential cost savings and efficiency improvements
• Secured approval for a 2-week sprint to implement changes

Research to gain a deeper understanding

Now that we had a more clear vision of what parts of the experience were causing issues, it was time to conduct secondary research to confirm the ux issues and support potential solutions. 

Cognitive overload and errors

• Technical challenges limited customizing the submission form based on individual website setup
• Customers attempt to fill all form fields on the standardized form, resulting in missing or incorrect information on their staging website

Mismatch of 'date' language with customer expectations

• The majority of our customers were familiar with using a Press Release service, like Businesswire.
• Identified a trend in the language used on these services: “Release date”. 

File and link management mismatch with customer behaviour and expectations

Researching  last 6 months of News updates from hundreds of customers, using AI to identify when and where files were being included in Press Releases on final published News items, I found:

• 71% of customers simply included a PDF version of the press release
• 19% of customers included both a PDF and other multimedia files to be attached
• 11% of customers did not include any attachments at all 

Tying in customer feedback:

• Customers referred to PDF download as “Downloadable version”
• Lack of confidence in the output on the website when adding a file vs. a multimedia file
• Confusing UX within a dialog experience for managing files vs. links

Hidden UX and missing headline link functionality

• Customers had difficulty finding the action to link their News to an external page
• 78% of customers linked headline to the related details page
• 22% of customers linked the headline to an external page
• Collaborated with CSMs, identifying missing functionality to link the headline to an uploaded file

Ideation and proposed solutions

Updating the language

• Use language for the required date based on familiar tools
• Update primary document upload label to customer suggested language

Brining clarity and focus to the form

• Enable customers to link the headline in multiple ways
• Use progressive disclosure to hide fields until a related selection is made

Simplify file and link management

• Grouping related content together, and providing language to describe outputs on the website
• UX focused on a single action, rather than performing multiple actions
• Considering an inline file and link management approach

Validation

In order to build confidence in our potential solution before releasing it, I wanted to validate a few key parts of the proposed improvements to the experience:

• Do the language and UI changes provide the clarity needed to ensure the customer understood:

1. 1. What date should they include?

   2. How would the website functionality work once they made specific selections? 

   3. Where would the provided files and links appear on the website?

• Are the changes to the experience easy to navigate and understand?

I set a goal to validate the improvements with at least 5 customers.

1. Reached out to the customers who had submitted related feedback via CSAT or directly to their CSM.
2. Leveraged WalkMe to place a popup in the Website Management Application only after a customer had submitted a News update, soliciting participation in a session.
3. Conducted quick validation during customer interviews related to CSATs coming in each week

These efforts resulted in a total of 8 customer usability testing sessions.

Gaining confidence

1. 8/8 participants clearly understood what date to include in the “Release date” field based on familiar language from News Wire services

2. 1/8 participants indicated that the language "Downloadable version" was clear, indicating our original language change was off the mark. Customers indicated that “Press release download” was more intuitive and clear language for the primary file attachment. 

3. 5/8 customers were overloaded and confused due to the 'Link news headline to news details page' option being pre-selected, displaying multiple fields contextual to this choice on the screen. 

   • When asked, customers preferred the default not to be selected, because it helped them focus on making an initial choice and then seeing additional information they could add. This could also prevent users from making a mistake if they didn't notice a selection was already made for them.

4. 8/8 participants preferred the inline file and link management to the dialog experience, noting that it was easier to quickly see the additional media they had uploaded and make changes quickly.

Final designs: Addressing customer problems 

1. Clear language: Updated language used for section titles and form fields now reflected taxonomy that customers were familiar with, and helped them connect information in their request to their website layout and pages.
2. Simplified user experience: The resulting form was as minimal as possible, reducing cognitive overload, and progressively disclosing more information as the user made specific selections. 
3. Focused actions: When exposed, individual actions to provide files and links provided users with a single, clear action to publish this information to the right places on their website.

View Figma Prototype
Use portfolio password to access

Evaluating success

Once our improvements had been released, I used Posthog and Salesforce to create dashboards and reports to understand whether our improvements were solving the core problems.

• Initial evaluation of time to submission was reduced from 2 mins 35 seconds to an average of 63 seconds for Express automated News updates.
• The rate of support outreach on News updates reduced from 60% down to 34%, indicating the improvements were bringing clarity to the UX, and meeting customer's needs.

Due to the short term of evaluation, I was unable to work with my Product Manager to evaluate a reduction in support costs or review replays of customer interactions with the improved UX to validate. However, the initial indicator of reduction in customer outreach to support for help suggests we were starting to move the needle.