Project Overview
The outcome of this project was a suite of new features designed to help small-to-medium businesses track and manage their sales leads and conversions.
The product, Salesgenie, was an online database that allowed business owners to find business information, curate lists, and research customers and competitors. It operated via a subscription-model.
- Duration:
- 3-6 months
- Location:
- New York City
- Company:
- Infogroup
- Tools:
- Illustrator
Infogroup was a provider of value added data and data‐driven marketing services for for small/medium businesses to Fortune 100 companies. Previously headquartered in Omaha, NE, the company has rebranded to Data Axle and is now based in Dallas, TX.
As a UX Designer, I supported data-driven, B2B products for small/medium businesses. I was responsible for producing wireframes, sitemaps, and workflows. I partnered with visual designers and product managers on branding and business requirements.
Informal user testing revealed a new opportunity focused on supporting sales leads.
Our original designs aimed to add new shared account functionality.
Under a single subscription, a manager or team leader could assign “seats” to team members. As a group, the team could search for leads.
Early wireframes and workflow supported user management and information architecture.This was new functionality to Salesgenie.
Early wireframe focused on user management.
We used informal usability testing to validate the design.
Throughout the design process, I pushed for an informal usability test to gather feedback from existing customers because I wanted more validation that our designs would actually serve the needs of our customers.
We conducted our informal testing at headquarters where I led most of the testing sessions. I received feedback on my ability to gain design insight without leading.
Test outcomes showed that customers worked together to grow leads, but not as the designs envisioned it.
Talking with customers revealed a “lead generation” workflow that was new to everyone. The Salesgenie teams decided to refocus efforts towards supporting the new behavior identified in testing.
Depiction of user testing and conference room.
New designs supported customer insights from testing, and included updates to the UI.
After gathering qualitative data, the new features focused on supporting the 3 main customer behaviors uncovered during testing sessions.
- Finding and tracking leads
- Categorizing leads by potential to convert
- Tracking conversations
Behavior 1: Finding and tracking leads
Customers could create user-defined tags help to identify and categorize leads. Once created, tags could also be applied as a search filter.
Custom tags in list view
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Examples of custom tag as a search
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Behavior 2: Categorizing leads by conversion potential
Customers could select a lead status to help identify potential or existing customers. Hot Lead? High potential to convert. Dead Lead? No chance of converting. Don’t waste your time…
Some of these terms came directly from our testing.
Lead status in side panel
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Behavior 3: Tracking Conversations
There was a new notes area on the side panel and on detailed business overview pages that allowed customers to quickly add notes about their conversations with customers. Customers could also notes as a filter.
Examples of notes: side panel and search
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Examples of notes: side panel and search
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Additional Design Work
Supporting the new behaviors included adding entirely new features — such as using the full-width of the screen (example at right). New functionality allowed users to customize their columns, plus other changes like collapsible side panels. Changes and documentation also covered: error messages, message prompts, and UI specifications.
Example of full-width view, with new features.
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Lead Status and Records Panel
The new features could be found as new columns and filters, as well as within a side-panel on the right side of the UI.
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Alternate Browser Views
Instead of a fixed-width layout, the UI became full-width, with minimum heights and widths that I documented with several views.
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Custom Columns
Another enhancement included the ability to resize, re‑arrange, and filter. Users could also turn off columns they didn’t need.
Reorder and filter columns.
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Resize column width.
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Fit & Finish: Error Messages and Prompts
Towards the end of the project, I documented functionality for error messages, prompts, and special cases.
Errors
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Prompts and Special Cases
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