Overview

Problem

The average time spent on the Share Document page was 4m 22s, indicating it was confusing and difficult to use.

Outcome

Time spent on the share page decreased by 80% and even at it's MVP state users voted to keep it rather than return to the pervious version.

Client

Proposify

A proposal software tool that helps modern sales teams create, send, track, and e-sign winning proposals, contracts, and agreements.

Info

Role

Timeline

Product Designer

12 weeks

Team

1 Product Manager, 2 Engineers, 1 QA & Me

understanding the problem

Why are we doing this?

1

Optimize sales workflow

Users only end up sharing a document after visiting Share Document page 55% of the time.

Median time for users who are successful at completing the task is 26 seconds. However, the average use of the Share Document Page is currently 4m 22s.

2

Improve deliverability

Users want to be sure that the e-mail with their sales document was successfully sent and delivered to the customer.

If the document falls through the cracks it will lead to longer sales cycles, additional follow-ups and may cost them the deal.

3

Build trust in the process

If the users trust that their e-mails are delivered and the e-mail represents their company in a positive light, more users will be likely to share documents via e-mail using Proposify.

data & metrics

Understanding the current experience

Sharing document is an emotional experience for many users. This is the moment of truth when you are delivering an important document that may make or break a deal. Trust in this process is very important.

Currently users can send the document via Email, or by sharing a link.

of large accounts send by email, making “Send by link” secondary to email, but still popular.

55%

of people entering the email designer don’t save any changes.

40%

<1%

of emails contain custom HTML.

hypothesis

By making the page simpler users will improve deliverability of e-mails, send documents faster and will be more likely to send using Proposify vs. sending outside of the platform.

Key Opportunities

Overview of the previous experience

Based on our data, these are the key areas of concern based off our assumptions. The design was confusing and bulky, with too many buttons and an unclear flow of how customers should progress to send their documents.

1

Where is the send button?

The current “Send button” is hidden beneath the fold, making it difficult for customers to share their documents.

2

Information overload

With so many buttons, fields and drop downs the entire experience is overwhelming.

3

Send by link

55% of all customers prefer to send by email, but the buttons to share by URL are difficult to find which could be introducing bias to the data.

4

Customize design

40% of customers drop off after selecting “Customize design” without saving any changes. This should not take priority and can potentially be removed all together.

Comparative Analysis

Identifying opportunities

Looking to six of our competitors it was quick to see that:

  1. Send by link was often a more popular option compared to sending by email.

  2. We were the only platform giving people autonomy over the email design.

  3. All send experiences were contained within the document editor, not on a new page.

Interviews

Validating with our customers

Now it was time to speak to our customers.

We narrowed it down to four key topics of discussion to get a better understanding of our existing metrics & assumptions.

1

What do customers expect branding to be used for in our product?

When asked, not a single customer indicated that branding should be tied to outgoing emails, further reinforcing our decision to remove the email designer.

2

What is the tolerance of Proposify branding on the email template?

Many stakeholders feared that adding Proposify branding to the bottom of emails would upset customers. However, when shown examples of branded emails and asked what they thought of the design not a single person even mentioned it.

3

Which experience should be prioritized, send by email or send by link?

Many customers did not know it was possible to share documents by link, giving us reason to prioritize this as the main action on the page.

4

How much customization do customers expect?

Our customers felt that not just any person in the company should have access to change the email design. They felt it should it be standardized across the board, increasing their brand consistency and professional image.

Iteration 1

Easily find what you need

First things first, the primary action on the page was changed to “Share”, making it obvious to people how they can share their documents.

Iteration 2

Less is more

The entire process was stripped down and the email designer was removed, allowing for a more streamlined experience.

Impact

Evaluating our results

In order to asses if our new design had the impact we expected we needed to check our KPIs that we set ahead of time to quantify our results.

1

2

3

By adding a “Go back to previous experience at the bottom of the page we were able to track if users preferred the new design.

Less than 1% of users clicked the link.

Time spent on page

Click rate

Average time spend on page reduced from 4m 22s to 56s.

This indicates that our users were able to send their documents faster.

Success rate

The percentage of users who actually sent a document when landing on the new share page increased by 13%.

Next steps

What comes next?

With positive impact established it’s time to take our findings and start addressing the core area of the app, the document editor.

Once the rebuild has been complete we will be able to integrate the share document experience into the editor, removing another page from the flow and making the experience even more intuitive for our customers.

Retrospective

Final thoughts & takeaways

Working on this project with Proposify was such a rewarding experience. I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to take the lead on this project, all the way from strategy & research to the final deliverable and measuring impact.

A huge thank you is owed to Adrienne Petrie, Safique Faruque, Tiago Aguiar, Harshita Putta, Matt Hughes & Victor Skyrlev for their support and feedback.

1

The best design might be the simplest

It was tempting to overhaul the entire experience from the start, but in reality users just needed a clear CTA to that they could proceed with sharing their documents.

By pushing no-code changes first we were able to have a dramatic impact on the user experience in a matter of minutes rather than weeks.

2

Scope creep is real

With the share experience being such a pivotal part of the user flow it is not surprising that it was interconnected to many other features in the app.

By making note of these connections we were alerted to other areas we may soon want to revisit without getting distracted and having the project drag on.

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