Streamlining a customer portal experience on desktop and mobile to increase online purchases and encourage product renewal cycles

Brief

RISA wanted to transition their clients away from phone and mail based licensing onto their online customer portal that would handle purchasing, renewing, and adjusting licenses. However, the portal was difficult to understand and navigate, plus a majority of their customer base is not technologically savvy.

Client

RISA delivers a suite of integrated software design solutions and technical support services that allow structural engineers to innovate with confidence, secure in the safety and efficiency of their designs.

Audience

Finance operation staff or engineer managers who have administrative oversight of their organization’s RISA product licenses

Timeframe

4 months

Role

Team of 3 UX Designers

Skills

  • Project Discovery

  • Competitive Research

  • User Testing

  • Wireframing

  • Prototyping

  • Desktop & mobile designs

Deliverables

UX Audit

  • Map key user flows in existing portal

  • Mark up existing screens with UX issues and potential solutions

  • Create impact effort matrix based on issues and desired solutions

User Testing & Results

  • Develop testing scenarios and relevant desktop screens

  • Utilize online platform for synchronous and asynchronous testing with internal stakeholders

  • Synthesize testing results into actionable insights and an updated impact effort matrix

Desktop Screens

  • Reorganize content categories to better suit desired customer outcomes

  • Add FAQs, help text, and modals to ensure customers understand how their actions will impact their wallets

  • Suggest changes for tricky checkout flows and product licensing

Mobile Screens

  • Maximize user friendliness by ensuring mobile and desktop designs appear and function similarly

  • Scale fonts to suit mobile dimensions

  • Replace selection screens and modals with mobile-friendly components

Process

Discovery

We began by aligning ourselves with the customers pain points and the client’s expressed UX goals. Then we conducted a UX audit through Figma designs and the portal’s sandbox environment. We also conducted competitive research on similar products, as well as other software subscription services.

Impact & Effort Matrix

We mapped the UX issues and potential solutions on an impact effort matrix to prioritize user flows and screens. We further categorized the tasks into the following: system feedback, UX/UI enrichments, clarification & support, navigation, consistency. This helped the client understand how visible the tasks would appear during the process.

Wireframes

Using five key work flows, we standardized a design language for the portal. To better suit desired customer outcomes, we reorganized the main navigation and gave it related sub-categories. We clarified how a customer’s actions will impact their wallets by adding FAQs, help text, and modals where appropriate. We also suggested changes for tricky checkout flows and product licensing.

Prototype

We developed user testing tasks for the work flows with wireframes and created working Figma prototypes for user testing.

User Testing & Synthesis

With the finalized working prototypes, we used Maze to conduct synchronous and asynchronous testing with internal stakeholders. We synthesized testing results into actionable insights and updated the impact effort matrix accordingly.

Mobile Implementation

Once the testing insights were incorporated and the desktop screens were complete, we applied the designs onto mobile screens for main work flows. We ensured the desktop and mobile screens appear and function similarly, modified selection screens with mobile-friendly components, and restricted desktop features that would be unfriendly to mobile screens (like downloading software trials).

Outcomes

These designs are currently live in the portal.

Reflections

One of the biggest challenges in this project was to design for tricky licensing situations, such as varying time frames across product renewals or licensing dependencies. As design consultants, we understood that our concerns were beyond the project scope (i.e. changing pricing and renewal models). We worked as much as we could with the present situation while continuing to advocate for improvements to the overall purchasing experience.

With more time, I would have designed potential solutions for a more streamlined purchasing experience and conducted research to diversify the client’s current customer base.