Product Design / AI-first Design System for a complex, data-driven B2B platform.
As Product Design Lead
BrightLocal is the world’s most recognised Local SEO platform.
Product Problems
Research showed:
- Customers felt overwhelmed at the visual design and UX
- Customers needed help onboarding
- Customers relied on customer support to navigate the platform
- Customers valued the platform but failed to take key actions
- Certain screens were highly valued but found confusing to use
- Specifically:Â 16% of users on trial did not convert due to usability: the second highest reason behind pricing.
UI and Front End Problems
Analysis showed:
- Years-long legacy of adding complexity to the platform through large UI patterns, accumulating inconsistency
- Very low component reusability
- Lack of clear primitive-pattern hierarchy
- Inconsistent component variants and states
- Insufficient accessibility support
Information Architecture: Global Navigation Models
As Senior Manager, Experience Design at Sage
Sage.com is home to more than 40 products in 27 markets and is accessed by millions of visitors every year.
The Context
Product ‘findability’ (finding the right product for you) is a key issue for Sage, from an e-commerce and a user experience perspective.
Research showed 30% of users who visit any page interact with the global navigation, so improvements in IA has a high potential to decrease journey times, and in turn increase e-commerce conversion.
The Opportunity
Research showed that around 30% of users use the global navigation, so any improvements to global IA had a high potential to improve performance and e-commerce conversion.
During the rollout of the new global brand (which came with its own ‘brand architecture’), we had an opportunity to explore different global navigation models and test for performance.
My Role
Product DesignÂ
- I let platform-wide research to inform the next year’s overall Product Strategy.
- I led the redesign of key platform experiences, aligning with brand for visual design and collaborating with PMs, Engineers and Analysts to solve for UX.
Design System
- I identified the business value of platform-wide UX/UI improvements to be $2M based on a solid commercial analysis.
- I identified forward-looking FE technologies (shadcn/Tailwind) aimed at the emergence of AI prototyping.
- I led the creation of BrightLocal’s new set of UI components, both as a Product Design Lead and as an individual contributor, in collaboration with Engineers.
Results and Impact
Product Design
- 100% positive feedback
- 65% less customer calls/emails during onboarding – expected
- 20% increase in trial conversions – expected
Design Sytem
- 10x Reduction of time from ideation to production-ready code
- 4x increase in product delivery speed
- 2x product squad delivery capacity
- Accessibility compliance by default
My Role
- I reviewed all past research and data on product findability to ensure past learnings were brought into the process.
- I presented the case and achieved approval of a global navigation project from executive leadership.
- I conducted 16 stakeholder interviews that resulted in 3 unique perspectives from which to look at global navigation, labelled as ‘’Brand’, ‘Evergreen’ and ‘E-commerce’ models.
- I developed a comprehensive and inclusive set of tasks to test for, based on the principal user personas and desired business outcomes for stakeholders—for example, content access, product identification or support.
- I partnered with Content Designers and SEO to produce realistic navigation labels for each of the 3 navigation models, to submit to tree testing against the existing global navigation.
- I produced 3 new complete IA navigation trees, identifying successful task completion criteria as well as preferred navigation paths, to be measured during testing
- I partnered with the Research team to conduct tree testing of 1 existing and 3 new navigation models.
- I partnered with SEO to conduct impression and click testing of all three models
- I conducted in-depth analysis of test results, identifying the key wins, insights and challenges
- I produced comprehensive documentation and an executive summary which highlighted the principal insights and recommendations, with one model as the clear preferred path.
Results and Impact
- All 3 new navigation models performed better than the existing one – up to 90% uplift in successful task completion
- The E-commerce IA model reached 95% success rate and 83% preferred navigation path
- Important ‘audience leakage’ identified for specific audience segments (e.g. Finance Professionals and Accountants) and between product fundability and business advice content
- Identified specific content improvements necessary for successful key user journeys (e.g. Product Support)
Product Design: Research Review
60 interviews were carried out to cover all of the 4 main platform areas, providing a new user research baseline.
Design System Communication
I gave several company-wide presentations on the potential and benefits of the initiative to ensure alignment.
Research Review
The most recent research threw light on current usage and primary shortcomings.
Design System / Product
Tree Testing
Instead of visual representations of navigation, we tested for task success when following a series of hierarchical labels, leading to a destination URL. This way, we could test against the users’ mental models independently from visual design or usability issues.
‘Brand-centric’ Model
Top level labels are:
Tools
Network
Expertse
‘Audience-centric’ Model
Top labels are:
Small business
Medium business
Accountants
Partners
Advice
‘E-commerce-centric’ Model
Top labels are:
Small business
Medium business
Accountants
