Project Overview

I was tasked as the UX Researcher & Designer to help set up a lead generation platform on a new startup. This would need to include features such as quick purchases, lead conversion metrics, customer/service provider contact function and much more.

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Initial Research

My first point of call was to understand the sort of clients that would be using a lead generation tool. So I went about doing some research on the web to find out current thoughts, feelings and usage of lead generation platforms. This is some of the data I came across:

• 76% of marketers use content to generate leads
• 36% of marketers pointed to lead generation as being a key marketing goal
• 85% of businesses use lead generation platforms to generate leads
• Just 21% of people open emails which would generate a lead to the business

So this highlighted some needs amongst our users.

• From this research we understood that emails were a way that is in some ways being phased out. Users either don't have the time to open emails or view them as spam
• This platform would be useful to both users and businesses in gaining leads and searching for services
• This platform needed to lend itself to instant contact rather than email format

After getting a feel for the current market and statistics, I wanted to also find out what were the leaders in the current market. I came across Bark and Expertmarket.com.

      One of the most popular and user friendly Lead Generation platforms and here are some features I noticed:

• User is able to create a lead instantly when arriving on the home page, clear CTA
• Simple, easy to use platform
• User receives instant potential leads by means of a comparison

      Expermarket.com is a world leading lead generation platform and these are the features I noticed:

• Quick responsive design, quick loading times
• Colourful, lending itself to excitement in lead generation

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After considering the market and statistics, we started to use this data to ideate what is needed for a lead generation platform to be successful and this is what we came up with:

• Product/Services that are useful to the customer
• info on site purpose clearly visible on landing page
• quality leads are acquired early to keep client coming back to the platform
• specialist service providers that have sales experience when speaking to clients
• ease of which a user is able to generate a lead

These were a main brainstormed ideas and this was also based off of research we found, particular the report done at the Georgian Technical University, Tibilsi.

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User Journey Mapping

From the research we had gathered we wanted to start putting together and ideating specific journeys users may take when using a lead generation platform. After discussing potential steps and the story of a user together as a team with the developers and product owner, we came up with this user journey:

This helped us to identify potential points where the lead generation platform could address pain points and be of use to the user earlier on in the journey.

After gathering this research and user data, were decided to get down some potential features/aspects the site would need. After brainstorming, we decided on these features:

• Easy, responsive design. This would mean limited screen loading times, to make sure service providers could purchase leads easily
• Clear and informative - especially the hero page, as this would encourage users to create a lead/project
• Intuitive - Our users have probably bounced around different comparison sites and web designer sites, so they need this experience to be want they are looking for immediately also lend itself to an easy sign up
• Useful - both to users and service providers alike, both need to see and feel the benefits of signing up and using the platform
• Dashboard - an area from both sides, where they can easily monitor lead/project progress and statuses.

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Wireframes and High-Fidelity

With this data, I started coming up with some designs. Our first port of call was what would the dashboard look like? It would need to be intuitive and responsive, with an overview page which would allow easy movement through the platform to the most crucial areas for service providers: marketplace (leads/projects), leads which are held and overall performance. For users, they would need to be able to easily see the projects/leads they'd created and their status (whether they had received a call/message/update on their project)

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Below are the wireframes I came up with for service providers:

After settling on these wireframes and them being signed off by the product owner, we moved on to the high fidelity designs.

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Some of the features or layouts in the wireframes were later amended, to fit in with UI guidelines and to give the dashboard a cleaner/leaner look to aid usability and accessibility.

THIS CASE STUDY IS CURRENTLY ON-GOING.

UPDATES TO DESIGN WILL BE PROVIDED,

ONCE DESIGN IS FULLY APPROVED