The problem

Build out the end-to-end customer journey of a newly created self-service advertising platform for SME and consumers. This self-serve advertising platform was an Australian first.

A significant problem to solve for was the flow and functionality of the product, that included the customer being able to create, build, publish, schedule and make payment for their ads across multiple NewsCorp mastheads, partner sites and social media channels. Creating the experience also covered educating and on-boarding customers (sole traders, businesses and internal agents) who had previously only used print media or sales representatives to design and publish their ads.

Other challenges

Differing business and consumer laws across the states, full end-to-end customer flows across different platforms including partner sites, social media and differing API protocols across social media channels. These major ‘out of sight’ technology and business concerns had to be successfully managed without impacting the customer experience.

My role

I was brought in to lead a multidisciplinary team and craft the user experience strategy for the end-to-end customer journey of the new self-serve platform, this included: registration, the ad design process, scheduling, billing, social marketing integration, walk-through videos as well as email marketing material.

My main duties were strategy, customer research, stakeholder management (across different parts of the business), stakeholder workshops, challenging and validating user stories, usability testing management, customer interviews, collaborating on wireframes & interactive prototypes, UI design and client presentations to the Senior Leadership Team.

Discovery

Working in three-week sprints, the task was to not only build a responsive system but to simplify large end-to-end customer tasks, address an antiquated design system and resolve technical legacy issues across two separate platforms.

Usability testing was was going to pivotal in this project as customer feedback (customers as in both business users and agents) was critical in driving and launching the desired product as there wasn’t a similar product in market.

Therefore speaking to current and potential customers was a must. In addition, customers who advertised solely through social media channels were engaged and surveyed to understand what worked for them and why.

Define

Customer insights included main or difficult tasks were carried out using large screens, i.e. creating the ads on a desktop computer; however, secondary or a simple task such as changing a payment method would be carried out on mobile or tablet device. All tasks across devices had to be catered for in an engaging, clear and straightforward manner.

The initial process of the self-serve product is to choose from a pre-designed template, or for customers to build their own design. The functionality included advert sizing, selecting fonts, colour edits and uploading your own images and logos.

Once the design was verified, the customer could then schedule their adverts (across multiple dates and channels) and choose a payment method. A major call-out for this self-service product was the introduction of social marketing, an Australian first. The first social media channel to be rolled out was using the Facebook API, this self-service social marketing tool was then rolled out across Google AdWords and Instagram.

Another further challenge was collaborating with two separate technology teams, as one of the teams were working remotely. One technology team managed the registration/login and advert design element of the user experience, and the second technology team dealt with the user flow post advert creation, this included scheduling, channels, and setting up a payment method.

Ideation

Sketches were drawn up of what was critical to the process and the customer flow. Due to the insight that customers would predominately want to use a desktop screen to design their ad and complete the scheduling and payment in on one visit, the focus was on how each part in the flow could be simplified for desktop. Also having the ability to save the work at stages was of utmost importance as customers didn’t want to spend time on creating an ad, not having the ability to save it and then having to start from scratch once they returned. Messaging was key in this process and the approach was to use engaging conversational language, assuring and instructing customers every step of the way of what the next steps were.

Prototypes

From the initial sketches and moving into low fidelity wireframes using Sketch, interactive prototypes were created using Invision for the desktop experience. Based on previous customer feedback different flows of varying degrees were built out in the interactive prototypes to test our hypotheses.

High fidelity prototypes based of visual designs could also be built out efficiently, as the way the component library was created in Sketch made it a simple and straightforward process to swap out UX components for visual design components.

Test and learn

Two rounds of one-hour customers interviews were held at News Corp HQ. Each round with five customers taking part. 
The face-to-face interviews included open-ended questions and task-based scenarios. From the first round of interviews, the customer feedback that was gathered was synthesised. These insights led to further enhancements in the interactive prototypes that were then presented in the second round of interviews.

A key area to gain customer insight was where to place the registration/create account function in the customer flow, either pre-ad build or post ad build process. This was a hot debate within the business, and by carrying out these A/B tests the answer would be determined by the people who would use the product… customers. This was a live initiative with a NewsCorp panel of existing and potential customers of 500 people who had indicated they were interested in finding out more about the self-service platform. The results were overwhelming by 77% to 23% in favour of customers preference to create an account after they had built the advert.

Summary

I moved onto another project whilst the first release of the project was still in development.
My role during the development stage was to consult with the engineers to ensure designs and interactions were accurate to the agreed research and experience. I would of loved to have seen the launch of the project and witness the reaction of the platform, however, I had left News Corp by the time the self-service platform launched. Many of the learnings and insights from the research been applied to other News Digital Media products.

Outcomes

Successful launch of the self-service advertising platform

Successful integration of social marketing (Facebook / Google AdWords, a first for the Australian market

Parts of the News Digital Media business applying our learnings and insights to their products

Successful facilitation and collaboration between two dev teams, one co-located, the other off-site

The ability to move quickly from UX to UI components for visual design due to the way the component library was built in Sketch

Introduction of the Leapfrog Design Language System

Major achievements:

• Building out Leapfrog Design Language System

• Instilling a human-centred design approach to the wider team

• Identifying business opportunities

Tools & tech stack

• Adobe Analytics

• surveymonkey.com

• Trello

• Google Docs

• Keynote

• Pencil & paper

• Guerrilla testing

• Sketch

• Invision

• usertesting.com

Client

News Digital Media (News Corp Australia)

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