Kenshoo is a SaaS Marketing platform that helps clients efficiently and effectively manage their search engine and social marketing campaigns across the major online publishers (Google, Facebook, Instagram, Yahoo!).
Overview
Kenshoo was looking for ways to increase their product offerings, their “stickiness” factor with clients, total addressable market, and ultimately the revenue per user. In addition, Kenshoo’s Co-founder and CEO, Yoav, had a solution in mind: a dashboard.
I lead the User Research to explore and define the possible market opportunities, building empathy with a new persona, and developing a Product Design strategy for a new product: Kenshoo Connect.
“Wow! Beautiful, simply beautiful. Now that’s the future of Kenshoo.”
Objectives
To increase Kenshoo’s Addressable Market and valuation by offering a new product aimed at the Head of Digital Marketing.
Improve product ‘stickiness,’ and drive cross-sell product growth amongst Kenshoo’s existing clients.
Provide the “Head of Digital” with valuable, meaningful insights about the true incremental value of their program efforts, team efficiencies, competition, and audiences with the highest degree of confidence.
MY Part
Qualitative Research
Contextual Inquiry
Task Analysis
Field Studies
Remote Studies
Competitive Analysis
UX Design
User Flows
Mockup Designs
TEAM
User Researcher (me)
Product Designer (me)
Product Owner
Visual Designer
Engineering Lead
Timeline
9 months
BUT FIRST, A NOTE
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information and in particular the report findings in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Kenshoo.
Opportunity
Kenshoo saw an opportunity to capitalizE on their Cross-Channel position in the market by creating a new product aimed at a new persona: the head of digital marketing.
A report at the time predicted the multichannel analytics market was expected to grow from $3.61 billion in 2014 to $9.89 billion by 2019 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 22.3% from 2014 to 2019. Due to Kenshoo’s unique position as a market leader in the Search and Social marketing arena, they naturally wanted a piece of the pie.
“55% of companies are… budgeting for cross channel analytics over the next 12 months.”
Challenge
Kenshoo wanted to increase product “stickiness”, total addressable market, and revenue per user through creating a new product aimed at the Head of Digital.
In order to achieve that goal, we needed to:
Understand the Head of Digital Marketing persona: their wants, needs, and daily/weekly routines.
Uncover the various value layers (i.e. chain) to the Head of Digital Marketing.
Discover product & market opportunities for innovation & differentiation.
Qualify & quantify the market opportunities & challenges in the marketing analytics space
My Role & Team
I lead the User Research and Product Design strategy for the new product—Kenshoo Connect.
As User Researcher, I designed, coordinated and conducted various research studies throughout my 9 months working on the project including initial discovery interviews through concept and usability testing. As product designer, I lead the definition, design strategy, and UX of the product from layout to interaction design.
To shorten timelines, I worked in parallel with a Visual Designer who delivered detailed visual design specs.
I was joined by a special product team charged with new product development consisting of a Product Owner and Product Growth Manager. Later in development, I partnered with a Visual Designer to realize the product experience.
Scope
Provide the “Head of Digital” with a new product that delivers valuable & meaningful insights.
The project entailed all parts of the product development lifecycle: generative user research, market research, concept design, concept testing, iterative design and usability testing on features and functionality.
Kenshoo Connect was announced on the main stage at Kenshoo’s annual conference K8 in February 2017 and launched in Beta in March 2017.
Constraints
THERE WERE A FEW Constraints that complicated the project’s scope and direction.
CEO says?…It’s a dashboard.
Our CEO was open to feedback and thoughts on strategy, but one thing he wasn’t changing his mind on: it was going to be a dashboard.
Distant relationship with new persona.
Kenshoo’s CEO had a solution in mind: a dashboard aimed at the Head of Digital Marketing. But Kenshoo didn’t really have a relationship with them.
6 months to get it done.
The leadership team was looking for this to be launched on the MainStage at Kenshoo’s Annual Conference.
Who
The project focused a new persona for Kenshoo: the head of Digital Marketing.
We defined this persona as someone within our client’s organization that oversees at least 2 channels (Search & Social, Search & Display, Search, Social, Display). due to the goals of increasing our addressable market: it was essential that it was not our day-today users.
What
I followed an inclusive Concept Design process, taking us 9 Months From Research to BETA.
Research
I conducted 10 Client interviews and read 25+ market reports to bring not only our new persona into focus, but also the market and demand.
User Interviews helped to shape a better understanding of the Head of Digital Marketing persona.
Market research helped supplement the interview data and help inform a product design strategy.
Below are some of the highlights of the research phase.
Primary research painted a clearer picture of our new persona and the challenges they face.
I captured the findings from the user interviews in a persona that identified Millie Jone’s goals, needs, challenges, and how she might use Kenshoo Connect.
Marketing Research revealed an opportunity for a cross channel data solution; however, foreshadowed data and cross-device challenges.
Red flags on the horizon
Interviews with our target users revealed obstacles to realizing our CEO’s vision of a dashboard.
I needed to get creative and strategic about how to not only report these findings to him, but also how to maximize value in a dashboard solution.
“I don’t want to use another system that replaces Google Analytics or our internal Analytics since people won’t trust it.”
design sprint
Note: for confidentiality, I’ve omitted and obfuscated some of the data conclusions and findings from the information and visuals below.
To jump start ideation, I led the project team through a 5 day Google Venture’s Design Sprint.
In 5 days, we reviewed the research, defined our problem and opportunities, created a simple concept that we presented back to our CEO and Sr Leadership.
CONCEPT
After debates with engineering on the design, I designed two different concepts to test with users: personalized & flexible vs. Visual & Simple.
Engineers didn’t like the personalization & flexibility presented in our initial concept and thought a more simplified approach would be better.
Concept 1 - visual & simplified
Concept 1 was more graphic and visual in nature with less flexibility in controls, but relied less on clicks.
Concept 2 - Personal & Flexible
Concept 2 was more personalized and also featured more flexibility to allow users to customize the dashboard a bit more.
test
Concept testing showed that clients loved the more personalized & Flexible design direction, but there was skepticism on Kenshoo’s ability to Pull it off.
We went back to our design partners and tested the concepts with 6 of our target users. In order to mitigate order bias, we randomized the order in which each concept was presented.
“Data is a pain in the @ss!
Are you prepared for this?”
refine
I iterated on the concept, flushing out the design strategy regarding navigation, interaction, and widgets.
The new product called Kenshoo Connect would serve as an insights and flexible reporting dashboard where users at various levels, from campaign managers to the Head of Digital Marketing, can review their marketing performance across channels.
Skills: Information Architecture, Visual Design, UX Design, UX Writing
beta
A phased approach helped focus on value and shipping quickly and iteratively.
I teamed up with the amazing visual designer, Noa Schweistein, on executing the many different phases and states of each widget for the Beta launch of Kenshoo Connect. I continued to work on the UX of future phases and features, while Noa expertly crafted a gorgeous visual design.
Phase 1 : Infrastructure
A large part at the beginning was sticking the data together from not only Kenshoo’s sources, but also building integration with other data sources.
Phase 2 : Out of Box Beta
The goal of the beta was to get enough valuable content and features that we could start measuring and collecting feedback.
Phase 3 : Scale
Phase 3 would focus on scaling the product through additional widgets on top of existing data sources.
Phase 4 : Insights & Integrations
The last phase we targeted focused on integrating more data storage and building intelligent insights engine that would offer deeper insights.
Mockup of Phase 2 Beta showing the cross-channel story. Visual design kudos for beta: Noa Schweistein
Beta screenshot with actual graphics and data being fed into the beta environment. When segmentation applied, users can quickly see not only a summed total or average of their total marketing efforts, but also a broken down view per channel. Visual design kudos for beta: Noa Schweistein
Results
While lauded internally and Externally, Kenshoo Connect was ABANDONED after 18 months of investment.
Not all for naught.
The dashboard had some redeeming qualities.
Inspired and Excited
The dashboard inspired internal and external investor relations and confidence in Kenshoo’s direction.
Foundation for the Future
Research conducted was foundational in defining a future vision for Kenshoo and helped spawn another disruptive product: Kenshoo Navigator.
Propelled the Cross-Channel Story
Helped define and reorient the product strategy around data and a cross-channel roadmap.
Reflections
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
What I learned:
😊 Heed the Research
The research was clear: the people didn’t want another dashboard. Had leadership headed the research, it would have saved the company nearly ~$1M in development costs.
🤯 Insights > Analytics. Insights + Actions = Magic.
The analytic and dashboard market is saturated. Aim for delivering insights over giving people more of data. Bonus points for connecting the insights to actions.
🤷♂️ Do your best, forget the rest
As some designers and researchers do, I wore my heart on my sleeve. In hindsight, I did my best to persuade the business to take a different direction and I should be happy with that.