Introduction
This case study details the redesign of Coniq's self-service platform, undertaken to improve user experience and encourage client self-sufficiency.
The Challenge
Some of our clients are not using the Platform as a “self-service“ tool to manage their accounts and instead rely on their Coniq account managers, which in the past has worked, but as we scale, this will prove to be more difficult and expensive for us. It would seem that this, in part, is due to the platform being challenging to use as it grew organically throughout the years.
Pain Points
- Poor Naming Conventions
- Unfamiliar Design Patterns
- Inconsistent Design Patterns
- Poor Performance
- Outdated Aesthetic
Coniq's platform caters to the needs of
four distinct user groups within the retail space:
1. Coniq Client Success Executives
- Objectives: Retain client satisfaction and ensure successful platform adoption.
- Description: Frequent platform users who assist clients in managing Coniq effectively. They possess deep knowledge of the platform but might not have a nuanced understanding of each client's specific business model or requirements.
- Needs:
- Tools and resources to efficiently manage client accounts.
- Easy access to platform updates and training materials.
- Dashboards with key client performance metrics.
2. Center and District Managers
- Objectives: Drive success for the shopping center or district by maximizing tenant satisfaction and attracting the right tenant mix.
- Description: These users prioritize overall center performance, ensuring high foot traffic and a strategic selection of tenants.
- Needs:
- Analytics to identify stores with the highest customer draw..
- Footfall reports to understand traffic patterns and their impact on Average Transaction Value (ATV).
- Insights into tenant performance and the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
3. Marketing Executives
- Objectives: Increase brand awareness, foot traffic, and sales within the center and for tenant brands.
- Description: Collaborate with brands to curate engaging offers, events, and deals.
- Needs:
- Performance data on deals and promotional campaigns./li>
- Tools to track campaign effectiveness and optimize marketing strategies.
- Insights into customer behavior to tailor future marketing efforts.
4. Retail Customer Service Representatives
- Objectives: Foster positive customer relationships to encourage repeat visits and boost recurring revenue for the center
- Description: Interact with customers directly, often within a retail environment like a customer service desk. These roles might involve seasonal staff or individuals transitioning to other professions.
- Needs:
- User-friendly interface to access basic information about the center, stores, and promotions.
- Ability to quickly address customer inquiries and resolve issues.
- Easy-to-understand reports on customer feedback and satisfaction levels.
The Team
- Carolline Matlock - Product Manager
- Nenad Jovanoski - Front End Developer
- Gregory Allan - Product Designer (myself)
Objectives
To make the platform an intuitive experience by creating a product that anyone with basic industry knowledge can operate without or with minimal instruction. Create a product within a family of products enforcing the Coniq brand.
Familiar Design Patterns
In order to make users feel comfortable within our platform we wanted to make the interface feel familiar so we looked at industry leading providers of online services and products
- Mailchimp
- The Google Suite
- Monday.com
- Clickup
Primary Navigation
We started with the naming convention which was confusing. We looked to see how the industry named the functions within our app and tested them with our test pool of users to discover which ones were clearest.
We then designed the icons for the primary navigation bar and tested these to see if they were clear to users. We decided that to help users with smaller screens the labels on the navigation bar would be hidden in a drawlike interaction, to make further real estate available for large tables. We made the icons large and clear to help those users accessing the platform in a busy public facing environment like customer service desk. This also lended the design a much more modern aesthetic. We had some issues with a few icons that were not clear, we did not anticipate just how many people did not know what an industrial assembly robot (which we were using to communicate “automations”) looked like.
Lean User Testing
We opted for using a very lean user testing methodology utilising a pool of internal users from within our business and external users from selected clients comprising those with high and low platform knowledge from various demographic backgrounds bearing in mind that the platform is in english and are used by businesses across the globe.With those results, we made minor changes to our design and tested them again with a different pool of users.
The tests for the most part took the form of the users being requested to do typical tasks to see if they could intuitively identify the journey they would need to undertake to complete it.
Designing To Improve Performance
The site platform had a global search field for searching all data across the site which was useful however it was extremely slow due to the large database size. We also noted that users tended to use the global search for data segments that were contained in pages they were already on, which meant that the search would return a huge number of irrelevant results. Thus we removed the global search and made it search contextual to the page the user was on. To further speed up search we recognized that users knew the type of data they were searching on so we added a prefix filter to the search bar so that it would only crawl the relevant data set required by the user. We also introduced an index and a wild card search, index search would look for a complete string while wild card would return any results containing a partial string.
As with everything new there was pushback not so much from external clients but the internal account executives who were reluctant to change their behaviours. We had to remind them that the end goal was for them to use the platform less frequently and our clients be more self-serving. We also pointed out that the combined effects of these improvements resulted in waiting times on various searches decreasing between 40 and 96%.
Universal Modular Design
Our goal was to develop a layout that we could repeat everywhere so that users never really had to look around the page for too long to find what they were looking for; it would become habitual. Essentially everything in the platform is some sort of table with tools to manipulate the data and fields represented within it. Initially we started off with a layout of a title of the page and the search underneath with the table underneath that with filters on the left; a fairly common design pattern. But we found this to feel awkward as it didn't seem to be sitting in the right place for the flow. What we found however is that we didn't really have enough room for some of the bigger tables when users were using smaller laptops.
The page is structured to flow left to right then top to bottom with pagination control at the bottom
We layered the page content with the title of the page at the top right with toggles that control the visibility of search and filters to the right.
We also allowed for settings for tables where users could hide or show specific columns as well as a button to add additional entries to the table. We made the table responsive so that it could expand and contract to fill the space available.
The tables themselves would then start with the entry name in the first column and conclude with a set of tools editing that entry.
Updating the Branding
Parallel to this project I was also working on refreshing the branding. For Coniq’s brand refresh, I prioritised building trust and security cues into the visual identity. Given the sensitive nature of their business, we opted for a conservative colour palette centred around a deep, authoritative blue and crisp white. This combination evokes stability, reliability, and fosters a sense of confidence in Coniq’s data handling practices. To ensure brand consistency across all applications, I developed a suite of illustration styles that could be flexibly implemented while maintaining a unified aesthetic. This aesthetic was applied to the login sequence and to error pages.
Dashboard Revision
Our next steps would be to look at revising the dashboards as the current ones are quite busy and overly complex with many very small components resulting in a design that's difficult to rapidly comprehend , which is the whole point of a dashboard. theres little white space afforded to the elements and they all seem to have the same weighting./p>
When thinking about the KPIs we need to return to the needs of of the users and the contexts of usage.
1. Coniq Client Success Executives
- New Members: This metric reflects the platform's effectiveness in attracting new customers to the shopping center/district. A rising number indicates successful onboarding and marketing initiatives.
- Active Members: Tracks user engagement. High active members suggest consistent platform usage and customer satisfaction.
- Points Collected: Measures customer loyalty program participation. Higher points collected indicate program effectiveness in driving repeat visits.
- Resources: CSEs can leverage these KPIs with client dashboards to gauge overall platform adoption and identify areas for improvement.
2. Center and District Managers
- Foot Traffic (Visits): Tracks the total number of visitors entering the shopping center/district. Analyze alongside dwell time to understand overall customer engagement.
- Average Transaction Value (ATV): Indicates the average amount spent per purchase. Analyze alongside foot traffic to identify stores generating high customer value.
- Deal Viewed vs. Deal Used: Measures the effectiveness of promotional campaigns. High conversion rates signify successful deal promotion.
- Resources: Center and District Managers can utilize these KPIs to identify high-performing stores, optimize tenant mix, and assess marketing campaign effectiveness.
3. Marketing Executives
- Deal Conversion Ratio: Tracks the percentage of customers who view a deal and eventually utilize it. High conversion rates indicate well-curated and targeted offers.
- Cross Sell Ratio (Deals & Points): Measures the success of combined marketing strategies. High rates suggest effective use of loyalty programs alongside deals to drive customer spending.
- Spend per Visit: Analyzes the average amount a customer spends during each visit. Track alongside foot traffic to understand the impact of marketing campaigns.
- Resources: Marketing Executives can leverage these KPIs to optimize marketing strategies, track campaign performance, and curate engaging deals for increased customer spend.
4. Retail Customer Service Representatives
- Points Collected & Available Deals: Provides CSRs with real-time information to assist customers with loyalty program inquiries and promote deals effectively.
- Resources: A user-friendly platform with easy access to basic information empowers CSRs to address customer needs quickly and efficiently..
Dashboard direction
This loyalty program dashboard provides a snapshot of key metrics that can be used to measure the program's effectiveness. The dashboard shows total revenue, transactions, active members, and dwell time. It also highlights trends over time, such as the change in revenue, Average transaction value and members. This information can be used to assess the program's impact on customer engagement and loyalty.You can see that I’ve chosen to force the user to view the data from top left to bottom right, this is mirrored with the choice of colour and the size of the first block.
