Admiral: The Visitor Relationship Manager
Recovering lost ad revenue for digital publishers.
Timeline
4 Weeks
Platform
Desktop
People
5 UX Designers
2 Co-Founders
2 Co-Founders
Stuff we did
UX Research, Strategy,
Wireframing, Prototyping,
Usability Testing
Wireframing, Prototyping,
Usability Testing
Digital publishers lose more than $15.8B in revenue in 2019 due to adblockers, an increase of almost half the $11B lost in 2016, (OnAudience). Yet while over 25% of users in the US use an adblocker, 76% of users also agree that publishers have the right to earn revenue from published content.
The Client
Admiral is a SaaS platform that focuses on Visitor Relationship Management –– creating relationships between publishers and their visitors to encourage them to pay for the content through: ad blocking, consent products (GDPR, CCPA) and/or subscriptions.
The Task
Redesign the onboarding experience as well as create a master dashboard to increase user engagement and upsell new potential users.
Understanding The Problem
Make a new dashboard.
Admiral’s existing site consisted of 3 siloed analytics dashboards that corresponded to their 3 services. The company specifically wanted us to merge all 3 dashboards into one unified master dashboard, as they believed that a revamped dashboard would be a prime opportunity for upsell and would help increase user engagement.
Consider new onboarding flow.
Furthermore, the existing site lacked an onboarding process, which was something that the Admiral executives wanted us to create, as they felt that this too, would be a good place to upsell their entire product suite.
Research & Competitive Analysis
To begin tackling a foreign industry (to our team), we implemented a multi-faceted research strategy including domain research, user and employee interviews to inform our approach to the project and fully understand the current state of the platform.
The goal was to evaluate the competition, while paying special attention to what metrics were shown and how they were organized.
We found that:Admiral offered an all-in-one package that others did not.Admiral focused on relationship building.
Our Findings
To begin tackling a foreign industry (to our team), we implemented a multi-faceted research strategy including domain research, user and employee interviews to inform our approach to the project and fully understand the current state of the platform.
The dashboard is a middleman.
Users spend minimal time logging into the platform, and when they do it’s primarily to export data to other platforms.
Admiral does not convey its value.
Users spend minimal time logging into the platform, and when they do it’s primarily to export data to other platforms.
The current platform is not straightforward.
Users found the site walkthrough helpful with a person manually guiding.
Customer support is Admiral’s primary appeal.
The majority of users were perfectly content with Admiral as a platform, only because customer support was there.
“The only thing preventing me from not using new products is lack of knowledge about them…it's not easy to get a snapshot of all the products that Admiral has”
-Kip, OMSFT
Customer User Flow
Customer service became a bottleneck in the business.
Admiral needed their platform to effectively communicate their value as a horizontal VRM service so that their users can optimize Admiral’s services without relying on customer support for guidance.
Design Principles
Straightforward
Present information in an easily digestible,
but polished manner
Human-Centric
Users are more than just statistics––retain a human touch to provide an engaging and approachable product.
Self-Guiding
Provide users with the confidence to adopt the platform into their workflow with minimal external support
Gratifying
Users should leave with a sense of accomplishment and value after engaging with the platform
Ideation
Usability
In order to validate this concept, we tested various prototypes with a batch user base survey.Our main goals going into testing were to test the new design against the existing platform with respect to:
Effectively communicating Admiral’s value
At the end of each test, existing and prospective users all left understanding the extent of Admiral’s products.
The grayed out elements were not obtrusive to their user flow while still conveying that there is an unused product; anything more obvious would become a hindrance to their experience. but polished manner
Effectively enhancing the usability of the platform
Users considered the navigation intuitive and the new structure was positively received.
The tour is a useful feature, but they expressed the desire to revisit information shown in the tour at a later stage.The quick management & recommendations were positively received as shortcuts, but the customization ability can be more apparent.
“The old one was too salesy and colorful. This is more straightforward.”
-Catherine (Encyclopedia Brittanica), current Admiral client
Solution
One place to configure, manage, and organize.
A streamlined tool that grants users the autonomy to personalize their experience while maximizing exposure to Admiral’s products.
Reorganizing IA on Dashboard
This is how regular usage of the dashboard could look like. The top metric shows the estimated revenue from all features. Customization of cards to relevant data particular to users is avaliable. A side bar on the left can easily point you towards todifferent products quickly. Another easy access bar on the right features toggles for promotions and events switches.
New Virtual Product Tour
To begin tackling a foreign industry (to our team), we implemented a multi-faceted research strategy including domain research, user and employee interviews to inform our approach to the project and fully understand the current state of the platform.
Conclusion
- Admiral thought they needed a better dashboard and onboarding process.
While true,
- What they really needed was for their clients to be less reliant on their customer support.
- We fixed it by lowering the learning curve for platform adoption, maintenance, and export of data by implementing different UX strategies.
- Usability tests showed a positive trend from clients for the proposed prototype.
- We gave the client extra steps they could do based on feedback.
Takeaways
Like with any project end, there were many takeaway moments for learning.
Some of those moments included:
Divide and Conquer. Due to the tight turnaround, our team divided and conquered by delegating tasks for ideation. Separating and coming back together enabled a fresh set of eyes when tackling a problem. The team split to do the dashboard and onboarding solutions. When we came back together, we collectively provided input on ways they could be made better.
Play to your strengths. We had team members that loved to write to people who liked creating graphics. One member was hyper detail oriented. I was more of a bigger picture person creating the ideation, structure, and strategy reports.
