Giving florists control of their online presence
Scott Sobere-Yu
The partner portal is a platform to help small business owners run their entire business. We already provide small business owners with e-commerce and POS solutions. We aim to also help them manage all of their business needs outside of e-commerce (reputation management, insurance, payroll, etc.)
My responsibility in this project was to lead the vision for the product as the lead product designer. The product that we built from inception is called the Partner Portal. Some of my significant contributions include user interviews, concept testing, running workshops, creating wireframes, and stakeholder management (Director of Product, CTO, Director of Engineering). In addition, short timelines seem to be the norm! (3 weeks)
Our team comprised the Director of Engineering, the Director of Product (as the interim PM), and myself. There was no designated PM from the start so I had meticulous about how I approach this project!
PROBLEM
Florists are having trouble managing their reviews. Whether it’s to show appreciation or to rectify any poor reviews, this is causing them to miss out on any potentially new or recurring customers.
75%
Of businesses don’t respond to their reviews on Google and Yelp
60-90%
Of customers read reviews before making a purchase
GOALS
I conducted market research and user interviews to dive deeper to validate/invalidate this feature. Based on our findings we crafter goals that involved metrics to gauge the success of the Partner Portal.
We found that our florists have too much software to manage their business which results in too much time spent on multiple platforms for different uses. The biggest takeaway is that we can help them save time.
The goals are based on having an existing user base and past data on previous product launches and adoption rates.
Aim to have 90% adoption rate
Increase stickiness by 10%
Increase efficiency for partners
FINAL DESIGN
A florist receives a review and responds to review that was left on Google.
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STARTING W/ CONSTRAINTS
No designated PM for this project
No streamlined way to recruit participants
Short timeline
GAINING CONTEXT
Taking this product from 0-1, I relied heavily on past research + user interviews to get an understanding of our florists' mindset and what their day-to-day is like.
APPROACH
What do we know now?
Florists don’t see the value in responding to reviews. They don’t know how it affects their SEO and customers' views of their business.
They don’t see the total value. They don’t know how it affects their SEO and customers' views of their business.
Florists don't think about reviews often. In some cases, negative reviews occur often enough to dissuade a florist from even looking at reviews altogether.
They'll only respond if they have time. If they have time to respond they will do so. Mostly through their mobile device.
Advocating for change from being engineering led to product led
A big part of this project was introducing collaboration with engineers. There was this mindset of "this person tells us what to do". A great outcome was displaying what collaborative decision-making was.
RELYING ON CROSS-FUNCTIONAL COLLABORATION
Because there was no designated PM for this project, I needed to focus on being efficient with collaboration with the CS team, Engineering, and PMs on other teams. This made it extremely helpful to speed up the discovery process and what direction I should take the project.
For example, the BloomNation POS system has a high bounce rate. Florists are more inclined to find what they need in the POS system and get back to work right away. Combining this information with user interviews made me understand that there are only some features that they rely on in the POS system. This presented an opportunity to segment users so that we can tailor features better to suit their needs.
SOLUTION: READ AND REPLYING TO REVIEWS ARE THE CORE FUNCTIONALITY
Providing the ability to florists to access and manage their reviews across various major platforms from one central location, the partner portal.
THINGS WE NEED TO CONSIDER
What is the entry point to the partner portal to maintain our value proposition?
We need to give them a way to control how we control their entry point to the portal (emails, text msgs, etc.)
How are we going to authenticate our florists?
FIRST-TIME USER ENTERS PORTAL
HIGH-LEVEL EXPECTED FLOW
When a florist finishes onboarding, there needs to be a simple flow for V1 so that florists how to read and respond to reviews.
DESIGN EXPLORATION
When exploring different designs, our demographic is people who typically read all of the content to get context.
USER INTERVIEWS PT.2 & CONCEPT TESTS
Florists' check their emails often
Many florists don’t check their emails often but check in a designated time slot for the day.
Florists' don't mind reaching out to customers
Florist’s are willing to reach out to a customer who left a bad review for the potential of retaining a customer.
Enterprise florists take action on reviews
They appreciated the amount of context in the emails because it showed them the value of taking action on reviews.
Concept Tests
Because we didn’t have much room on our timeline and since the majority of our florists were only able to meet for 30-minute sessions, concept tests were the chosen method to be as efficient as possible. We were able to validate/invalidate many of the interactions with the design.
ONBOARDING AND EMAILS
Florists are more privy to checking their emails so that's why we opted in to build an email notification system using Churn Zero. This includes notifications and onboarding.
For V2 we are going to use User Pilot for onboarding to focus on product marketing. The reason why we didn't start with this is that we ended up acquiring the User Pilot service after most of the project had been finished.
Here's why we decided to focus on emails for V1:
Florists check their emails often. Like most people, florists check their emails at specific times of the day.
Florists don't mind re-engaging with customers who left a bad review for the potential of retaining a customer.
Enterprise florists take action on reviews. They appreciated the amount of context provided in the email notifications.
EMAIL EXPLORATION
Because florists use emails as a primary source of information, emails are extremely important to test because they will provide the most value for onboarding and taking action on reviews.
EMAIL TEMPLATES (OTHER VERTICALS)
What's important is to reuse elements that florists are familiar with so that scanning the email quickly becomes easier. Highlighting the contents of the review will play a big roll as well.
EMAIL INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
These emails are going to play a paramount role in the success of user adoption. The information placed in the email is what's going to be tested to get and understanding of how florists feel about this information. We are going to show both good and bad review email templates.
EMAIL LAYOUT
Breaking down the information so that we provide the right context and hierarchy for florists. Once we expand to all SMB's we also need to make sure that it can be universally be used (of course we would need to test further!)
CONCEPT TEST CONT'D
The main point of this test was to gauge how florists responded to the content on the email templates. The second thing we were looking for was how they would respond to the CTA’s.
CONCEPT TEST (SUBJECT LINES)
Neutral reviews did the best with our florists. They didn't have any emotions tied to reading the subject line which is why they are more inclined to open the email.
CONSISTENT SUBJECT LINES
Florists responded much better to subject lines that were neutral because it gave them less of an expectation. If a florist is just starting their work day and they see a laundry list of bad reviews to respond to, the value proposition is immediately thrown out of the window.
EMAIL CONTENT
The blue review rating made it confusing and seemed like it wasn't associated with reviews. In some cases, it felt like a bookmark.
Surprisingly, they were more responsive to "See More Reviews" rather than associating it more reviews with a number.
LOW-RATED REVIEWS
Low-rated reviews need to be treated properly because partners can be sensitive and may disregard reviews altogether, which then could lead to a perceived low-value feature.
LOW-RATING TEST RESPONSE
The IA and layout had a very good response by florists. They found the next steps and header to be very helpful in how to approach the bad review. In addition, they showed more confidence in approaching bad reviews.
They did like that the rating didn't stick out too much because it gave them less anxiety when reading the review.
REPLYING TO A REVIEW
The goal for this concept was to gauge how well florists would understand the design
REVIEW DETAILS
We decided on this iteration because it’ll allow for deep links, and in case someone other than the florist wants to respond, they can do so by using the link to the review.
KEY TOUCHPOINTS
These are touchpoints that reputation management affects throughout the partner portal.
ACCESSIBILITY STANDARDS
Because I designed the Partner Portal from inception, I made it a point to, at the very least, pass all the accessibility standards for sizing (smallest 16px font on desktop and mobile) and contrast (AA, AAA).
MOBILE OPTIMIZATION
IMPORTANT USE CASE
Customer Notification
When a shop owner responds to a review, the customer receives a notification
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EDGE CASE
It was evident during the research sessions that florists didn’t know how to properly reply to both good and bad reviews. So we decided to give them a template to use and change to their liking!
BUSINESS IMPACT
These metrics presented are based on numbers since launching in September 2022
150%
growth rate from February 2023 to March 2023
55%
adoption rate. The active users grew 31% higher than launches in the past
20%
stickiness rate
PIECES REDACTED FROM THIS CASE STUDY
3 additional concept designs that were tested (daily, weekly, and monthly recap emails)
How florists set preferences for review notifications
Reusing components from BloomNation for reply templates
HOW WE UNDERSTAND FLORISTS
Interestingly enough, Reputation Management was the first feature that was built in the Partner Portal. Originally we were going to go the route of payroll BUT we found that florists found more value with Reputation Management which opens up the door to manage their listings on platforms such as Yelp, Google, Facebook, etc.
There's definitely more I'd like to share about my projects! Reach out via email. I'm looking forward to it.
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Posted Jul 20, 2023
As a the lead product designer for this project, I led a 6 person team to give florists the ability to read and manage their reviews.
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