Talon.one Campaign manager
Client & Live link
Talon.one - https://www.talon.one/
Services
User Research Service Design Information Architecture Visual Design UI & UX Design
Industries
Client Industry
Date
Febuary 2022
Background
Launched in 2015 by an experienced team of developers and entrepreneurs, we wanted to build a system that would allow marketing, business, and product teams to come up with and implement promotions without the need for developers. Since then, Talon. One has grown into the leading Promotion Engine for businesses operating all around the world.
Talon.one had plans to vastly improve their user experience and I was given the task of making improvements to the campaign manager, Talon.One’s leading product. I was tasked with conducting a small design review of the CaMa by finding the screen(s), flows, or features that I thought needed the most improvement from a growth and retention perspective, highlighting what doesn’t work in the status quo and ways to improve it. I was also given the license to create mockups or prototype new flows and interactions using my preferred Figma kit (or the design Open Source kit).
Team Members: Head of Design( Matthew Potter), Lead Product Designer ()Product Designer, Product Manager, and Front End Developer.
Problem Discovery
Given the time limit for this project, I knew I had to be methodical and efficient in my approach to this project. Although I had looked at the web application, I did not want to formulate a hypothetical problem. I wanted to solve real and existing issues that users were facing with the campaign manager and also ways to improve user retention, so I started out with research.
My Research goals included the following
Learning as much as possible about users - Who would actually use Talon’s campaign manager? What are their pain points, needs, and goals?
Understanding current solutions and the competitive landscape - what products do users use away from Talon’s campaign manager? What other method can one use in creating and managing campaigns? Who are the big players?
What type of digital solution is desired to solve user needs?
Determine if we can leverage new technology or innovation.
Research; Learning about users
In order to get a glimpse of Talon’s users and their needs, I went online to search for reviews of the Talon campaign manager. Luckily for me, I was able to find a good amount of reviews online via Capterra and Trustradius.
Despite the relatively small sample size of data that I got online. I was able to draw out some common themes and patterns that later influenced my design decisions.
The learning curve is too high and onboarding is difficult.
"I wasn't in the team when the integration was done, so getting to know the logic behind all attribute names and how they work is hard."
"As a new user, it was very difficult to understand what I was doing in the rule builder/campaign builder due to the lack of descriptions in the field."
“The onboarding is painful, but after a few weeks and taking baby steps, you get to build amazing growth engines and start to see results of conversion and retention.”
“It was difficult finding the support section”
The cost is a bit high
“Cost can be expensive, depending on your scale. It depends on your ability to internally mobilize actions internally to make this a profitable addition.”
Difficulty in understanding analytics.
Research; Key Insights
other key insights included;
I found 11 reviews in total.
54% of the reviews were from C-Level executives.
70% were working in Tech related business.
54.5% of these users complained about learnability and poor onboarding(I ended up focusing on this problem).
Defining; Humanizing findings
It would be impossible to solve for every user or problem hence I decided to solve for a particular persona, one which was most representative of the data I got from my research. From my research, I found that poor onboarding and a long learning curve stood out more hence I tried to focus further research on this.
I zeroed into a particular person as it would be impossible to break into multiple personas within the limited time frame.
Why do onboarding and Learnability matter?
For me to further assess the problem. I decided to take a deep dive into why proper onboarding and shortening the learning curve for Talon’s campaign manager matters. Here are some interesting insights I found;
Most Saas companies put more effort into improving long-term retention—but it turns out that improving early retention through better onboarding cascades into the rest of your customer life cycle, creating ongoing retention gains.
Exploring; Looking at competition
In addition to some of my findings through reviews, I decided to check out competitors too including reviewing apps myself and checking user feedback. Overall I found that most of these applications had the same issue as the intuitive use of these applications solely depended on support and training.
I moved from looking at the direct competition to looking elsewhere for what works and how others were making onboarding seamless. I found that some tools got it right and these tools were being used by our users already.
Overall, I found that these tools engaged mechanics like
In-app training; Welcome screens, tool-tips, pop-up screens, and tutorials are the tools of choice.
Content: More ****of a supplemental process than a stand-alone one. I found that this worked well if paired with either email onboarding or in-app onboarding.
In-person training
Personalized onboarding: Slack is best known for its onboarding process, which appears to be quite personalized.
Defining; Problem definition & Ideation
Busy Executives need a way to seamlessly get onboarded and learn about the features of the Talon campaign manager.
Essentially the question I was looking to solve for;
“How might we shorten the learning curve of new users looking to use Talon’s camp?”
Alternatively “How might we seamlessly onboard users into the Talon campaign manager?”
User stories & Solution ideas
Based on my findings I decided to develop a few user stories to define user needs properly. These needs informed all my design decisions/ feature ideas.
Conceptualizing
To set the foundation for design I like to create a mood board. This mood board contains various inspirations I found whilst doing my research.
Task & User flow
For me curating the right flow helps set the tone for the design. I sketched out tasks and user flows in order properly detail steps and tasks that the user could take through their journey on Talon. And to put in certain areas where I thought onboarding and support could come in.
First the task flow
Next the user flow
Sketching & Wireframing
Once I got the flow down I moved on to sketching some of my ideas down based on some of the inspirations I had curated earlier and then forming something new for the campaign manager.
Wireframing; Exploring Talon’s Onboarding - the idea behind the design
After sketching out some ideas I began to wireframe. Here you can also see the ideas behind my final design.
In-app Onboarding - I started out with this strategy to help guide the user through the software as they explore it for the first time. I engaged the use of welcome screens and tooltips whilst taking the user the user around the app.
In-app Product tour & Tutorials - Next I added a Quick tour button that enables the user to go around the app at any point, especially for cases where the user cancelled on the onboarding flow at the initial stage. This button would lead users to the “Talon tour section” where they can find tutorials and also take tours around the campaign manager.
In-app Support - This was to allow new users to interact with a real human being and have all their questions answered. At the same time, they see first-hand what the Talon can do for them. I found this to be an excellent strategy if we are targeting small businesses or high-value prospects.
You are probably wondering why I expanded the navigation bar and moved the profile section; I found some complaints regarding users not finding support and integration hence I decided to expand the navigation bar and increase color contrast to ensure emphasis and difference.
Final Design
I had set the foundations for the design and it was easy going through it. I tried to make things as simple as possible while following Talon’s brand guide.
Admittedly I did not spend much time on assets or design systems as I would normally do. I spent more time doing research, conceptualizing, designing, and prototyping. However, I tried to ensure consistency overall. I used a different Icon set (Iconsax) and typeface (Helvetica Neue) as I wanted to give Talon a modern feel.
In-app Onboarding scenario - Susan has logged in to the campaign manager. She receives a welcome note and gets onboarded
In-app Product tour & Tutorials Scenario - Susan previously canceled the onboarding exercise and would like to get started with campaigns. She taps the Quick tour button and she is tutored around the campaign module.
In-app Support Scenario - Susan is confused about certain parts of the Campaign, she clicks the “speak to an expert” icon to reach out to support staff in-app.
At every point in the user journey, I wanted the user to feel like they are seen and that they always have a helping hand whenever they are in need of one.
Final Thoughts & Impact
I wish I could explore more areas but putting out a research-driven solution is not always easy within short time frames. However, through the process, we were able to improve an important part of the campaign manager. At the review phase I got good feedback;