Projects
Cloud Campaign, a B2B/B2C SaaS social media management platform, tackles post reliability to provide customers with greater transparency on post failures.
This project served our customers as well as the business. For our customers, we were able to provide transparency which then created clarity in how to address these failures. For the business, we were able to equip the internal team with a breakdown of said post failures to further increase post success rates.
Post reliability reflects product reliability. With post reliability at a success rate of below 50%, we needed to address underlying causes of post failures.
We were unable to provide our customers immediate feedback on as to why their post has failed.
To address the challenge at hand, we needed to restructure the way in which post error messages were stored and tracked. Not only that, we moved to surface the error messages and provide client facing information.
To do so, this project included backend lift as well as frontend changes to the existing platform. The goal was to provide relevant information for the clients that they could take a apply to their content and to provide data for the internal team to address post failures sourcing from non client related discrepancies.
Significance: Improving post reliability would increase product reliability.
It would create a clearer picture of platform quality and provide the needed data to move the business in the right direction for stronger product market fit.
Opportunity: Stronger customer relationships can be built provided the increase in trust.
This in turn could bring in more customers through word of mouth marketing and through strong statistical data which can be used in marketing.
Key Points of Consideration
How to translate the technical post error messages appropriately for customer viewing
Design with technical restrictions and future improvements in mind inclusive of character limitations due to space, functionality given the legacy code, and the different areas of implementation
How to add value and maintain trust with our customers
Key Points of Reflection
I gained more experience speaking with customers, facilitating user interviews, and carrying out usability tests.
I experienced the importance of flexibility and optimized task management to better tackle scope creep/change.
I have a higher level of admiration for team members who work directly with our customers on a daily basis.
Initial Information & Actions
One of the biggest business goals of the year was to improve post reliability and bring up the post success rate to 98%. Earlier we discovered significant friction between customers and the platform when it came to post failures. Without clear understanding of why their post failed, customers were left in the dark for too long. It affected the efficiency of their social media scheduling which works against the mission of Cloud Campaign.
This project was broken down into several phases that started with backend restructuring. The engineering team discovered better ways to store and track the post errors. The next step involved translation of post error messages into colloquial and industry approved language for Cloud Campaign users.
UI/UX goals for this project:
Provide transparency, immediate feedback on post failures
Clean up workflows for reposting content
Utilize the space and keep the design clean/structured
Create opportunities to gather metrics for the business
User Experience & Feasibility
During the initial stages of the design process, I was working under the assumption that our users would be able to get immediate feedback on the actions they take on a failed post. Those actions could include editing content to fit requirements, renewing a credential, and any other actions taken to address the error. This assumption allows for posts to be rescheduled or reposted from the post error screen. However, given feasibility constraints, we were unable to provide that capability at the time. This shifted user experience flows as well as the visual design. Below images depict the initial and adjusted user flows.
Project Decision: In order to stay on the timeline, user experience was temporarily compromised in order to maintain the determined project scope.
The initial experience relied on the premise that once the user has addressed the error through the button entry point in the modal, that action taken would be reflected automatically.
The button would change into a green checkmark icon in this case. However, given the increase in scope and weighing out the factors of time, resource, and value, we decided upon an initial release of a manual process. The experience became manual in that once an error was addressed, the user would have to check it off. Upon checking off the item, the button, which acts as an entry point, would become disabled.
