During the course of my employment with Realtime Media, I was tasked with improving the user experience on the marketing site. Through the collaborative environment, the website was improved almost continuously with a more refined look every year.
The overall goal was to educate users about the services that RTM offers and convert users through the call-to-action links. We were able to measure and improve through the use of analytics and implementing various marketing strategies.
The business of full-service digital promotions can get complicated really quickly. I wanted to explain the services as clearly and concisely as possible.
It took me a while, after joining, to understand what the business actually does. RTM’s website at the time proved to be not-so-great educational tool. After growing confident in the business model of the company, I set out to make the website very simple to understand.
Using visually-pleasing user flows, examples and illustrations I was able to explain the business structure. I created each page of the site map with the intent of laying out the intricacies of the services that were being provided to customers.
Separating from the use of jargon and technical writing also improved the overall flow of each page and helped with the mission of educating each customer.
The website became fairly limited in terms of showing the capabilities of the business; so we decided to create online products that would significantly improve the quality of content to users without overwhelming them.
To educate the user better, I designed a Demo Portal to showcase the layouts of the digital promotions. Once users were converted, they still took up a significant amount of time in providing assets; for that, I created a Guidelines Portal for the layouts. This increased the education for prospective clients and decreased the Project Manager’s time in dealing with incorrect asset requirements.
To improve user conversion, I created a dynamic Get Quote form that easily allows users to estimate the costs to execute their promotion and provide RTM further information about the lead. I also designed an Internal Promotion Configuration tool that would allow the Project Managers to manage each promotion from beginning to end without taking any development time.
The use of analytics and heat-maps allowed us to see the points of difficulty in each page before we improved it, and then see effects in user engagement after.
Since design is subjective, it was always difficult to understand whether some of the decisions that were made, were in fact beneficial. Analyzing user activity before and after a design refresh, allowed me “score” my work objectively and see what I did well and what areas I could improve on.
We also took multiple detailed marketing surveys where our current designs were compared to our competitors and our own older work. The surveys provided an exuberant amount of information regarding the user preferences and behavior.
All the information gathered was used in making foundational decisions for every page and product of the brand.
