Avenue Portfolio
Team
Robert Freeman, Crystal Chow, Kevin Tam
Role
Research, Interaction design, Visual design
Time frame
Four months
Who is this for?
At the beginning of this project, we know this portfolio is a tool that is designed to allow the sales department to communicate to our clients about our product. However, the due to resources constraint when this tool was first built, it is not the best user friendly site for our users. Therefore, we decided to have this tool redesigned for one our of OKR projects.
Interview with the Sales Department
We interviewed 6 participates - 3 SDRs and 3 AEs asking about their sale process, how to communciate with clients about our website, and their feedbacks on the old portfolio.
Before Jumping into Solutions
Although we already understand where the issues are for the tool:
1 Outdate websites (since we target the US market now)
2 No filter options to find websites
3 Long scrolling to preview websites
We recognize that it is important to first fully understand
1 the sales process
2 when do they actually use the tool
3 How do they currently look for new sites to show clients
Debrief & Insights
Insight 01
Diversity of sites help to communicate with different clients’ needs
Insight 02
Sales team currently get updated sites from Slack: Announcement channel and bookmark the ones they like
Insight 03
Both AEs and SDRs approach clients by understanding their pain points, problem, and needs. (Social proof of other realtors in their area/brokerage as a main sale strategy)
Prioritizing what we need to tackle
During the brainstorming section based on what we understand from the insights we found, we define and prioritize things that we need to tackle in five categories:
1 Client Experience
2 Ease of Use/View
3 UI Style Elements
4 Content Category
5 Ongoing Maintenance
Redefining Userflow
Being in the user perspective, we map out the userflow to better help us understand how the website should be layout. We realize it is better to minimize the interaction within the website so our users can explore and find the website they want easily.
Focusing on Search Function
According to one of the insights we found, diversity helps to communicate different clients' needs, in order to us to showcase variety of website we design, we need a better navigation to help users search the website they want. We began to categorize some of the important filter terms, and by doing so, we sent out a survey to the sales department and launch operation to see how they describe clients' websites.
Insights
Insight 01
Users clearly know the distinction between professional, country, and elegant.
Insight 02
Similar words that describe the same look and feel. Ex: Rural, Earthy, Country.
Top level categories: (these words have to be mutually exclusive)
1 Funky
2 Professional
3 Elegant
4 Country
5 Luxury
Sketches + Flow
After we define the categories, we sketch out some wireframes to help us visualize potential layouts and transitions of each screen.
The Portfolio
Landing
To showcase that we personalize each designed website, we want to entice our clients by showing descriptions on the home page to explain how we help our client to design her website.
Website Preview
By categorizing the website we design using cards, it allow users to quickly preview the look and feel, and as well as the brokerage and location of the website. Users have the options to directly visit the site, or to discover more details about the website in the detail page.
Website Detail Page
The detail page allows users to have a quick look at the design elements in the website. It allows users to understand how designers create a website by gathering all the important information, such as the realtor's focus, location and the message they want to convey.
Beta Version & Moving Forward
Testing Functionality
By further testing our assumptions, we decide to launch a beta version of the portfolio to evaluate if our research is aligned with the actual product. Some of the questions that we keep in mind:
1 Did we use the best term to describe each categories?
2 Does the portfolio provide enough search-ability for sales team and clients to explore different website?
3 Do clients understand the value of our product through the portfolio?
On-Going
Moving forward, we are still deciding on how often do we want to update the new websites we do, and keeping in mind that the websites we upload have to match with the sales team's needs. We also need further research on naming categories when we have clients requesting for different style of websites.