Ready.Set.Pivot: Digital Strategy

TL;DR

A new business was having difficulties prioritizing their long term roadmap and sharing their unique value proposition. Through usability research, stakeholder interviews, and touchpoint strategy mapping, my team and I were able to fill in the current gaps and define a brand and content strategy for the future.  

Team: Cristhian Arias, Sam Jorgensen, Chad Wahlberg

Role: Project Manager, UX / UI Designer

Methods: Usability Testing, Competitive Analysis, Touchpoint Strategy Mapping, Low – High Fidelity Wireframing, Stakeholder Interviews, Personas, Information Architecture Diagramming, Kanban Board

The Problem

Changing career paths can be a daunting experience, especially when you’re pivoting from an established, well-paid role to something less known.  Ready.Set.Pivot (RSP) is an organization that helps experienced women leaders do just that—specifically, stepping off the corporate ladder move into roles that align more closely to their values or are more passion-aligned work. Through classes, events and experiences they guide women through these changes. 

The organization was looking to create a user-focused design strategy in order to expand their local reach by increasing member engagement and drive current membership renewals.

The organization hosted their first event in March of 2020, and my team was tasked to clarify the customer journey and create a digital touchpoint strategy, from discovering RSP to attending their first event, so that they can reach as many women as possible.

How might we help connect and support women who are looking to make a significant career change?

The Solution

After conducting a competitive audit, talking with primary users, and meeting with stakeholders, I focused my attention on creating a streamlined onboarding process and new service that would allow members to connect without needing to connect directly with the overworked founders. For the Understanding phase of the customer journey, I created a Onboarding Quiz— a low-effort service that allows users to identify if they’e in the “Ready”, “Set”, or “Pivot” phase and provides them with events customized just for them. For the Engagement phase, I created a Job Shadow Service— a differentiator for RSP that connects members who are planning on a career pivot with women leaders who have already gone through the process, building community and connections. Additionally, I created a Post-Event Survey— a quick way to gain valuable member feedback while driving return engagement by offering a discount after survey is complete.

The Process

Prioritizing the Paths Forward

After reviewing the design brief, the team brainstormed secondary research methods that could be used to better understand the current state of the client’s services and customer journey. We used a kanban board to keep track of the many tasks we were working on and assign responsibility.   I focused on understanding the competitive and comparable websites by completing a competitive audit. 

I noticed that the hierarchy and navigation were confusing for the team to figure out, so I decided to conduct a quick usability study to see where there may be current pain points. I saw three key themes:

While I was meeting with users, my teammates were laying out a current state information architecture diagram and conducting secondary research on their social media pages.

As we were diving deep into existing material, we began collecting the knowns, unknowns, and assumptions exercise to inform the questions for the stakeholder meeting. Their current website was somewhat vague about the services they offered, so we wanted to learn more about their current offerings, as well as what success might look like for their organization. 

After meeting with two of RSP’s founders, we learned that:

1. This is a side project for all of them, as they all still have 9 to 5 jobs, so automating processes and creating a less high-touch onboarding process is highly desired

2. Success for 2022 would be increasing conversation of newsletter subscribers to paid members

3. They have a lot of great ideas, but need help understanding the customer journey in order to focus their efforts moving forward

Defining the Strategy 

Pulling all this information together, we created a guiding strategy statement that guided us through the next few days:

“All user experience touchpoints for RSP will help experienced women leaders who want to redefine what success looks like in their life to feel inspired, supported, confident and motivated so that they’re able to prioritize what’s important, and create a clear, concise plan to make a meaningful life change. 

We will do this by creating consistent and aligned branding, clarifying expectations, and addressing current pain points. 

As a result, we hope to see an increase in sign-ups, conversion, and current member retention.”

Understanding the Current Journey

With our current strategy in place, I led the team through a touchpoint strategy mapping exercise to visualize the phases of the user journey, their pain points, current touch points and gaps in the existing services. We started by building out a persona to help the team empathize with prospective users. 

The first phase started with Awareness, which was currently driven by word-of-mouth and time intensive one-on-one meetings with potential members. We then focused our attention on Understanding. Based on our learnings from the usability studies, we knew there were many user pain points in this phase of the journey. Because of this, we spent significant time discussing how we could streamline this phase, bringing a user from confusion to clarity. Testimonials and reaching out to members defined our Visualizing phase, which led to Engaging with services. Finally, we rounded out with Evangelizing, or how satisfied members can help other women through the process.  

With our touchpoint strategy map in place, I then led the team through a brainstorm exercise to identify specific ideas / touchpoints that both aligned to the strategy statement and solved both RSP and potential member’s pain points. 

After ideating over 20 different solutions, I focused my attention on two areas: the onboarding process & current services. 

The Findings and Recommendations

1. ONBOARDING QUIZ

During the stakeholder meeting, we heard multiple times that the current onboarding process was high touch, and because this is a side job for all six founders, it was leading to burn out. I wanted to find a solution that could automate the process and also address where users fall on the Ready. Set. Pivot. process, something we heard was a need from both the RSP team as well as users.

2. JOB SHADOWING PROGRAM

Also, after noticing that RSP lacked a differentiating service, I also chose to create a job shadowing service, again trying to minimize the high touch service offerings on the founding members and allow for RSP members who’ve successfully gone through the process to grow their community and give back to the next generation of women leaders. 

3. EVENT FEEDBACK SURVEY

I also wanted to streamline how RSP gathered feedback from their events to use for testimonials. Currently, they meet up one-on-one with members to discuss. I created an event poster with QRC code that could be placed at any in-person event, allowing attendees to provide qualitative feedback directly from their phone as they were leaving an event. When they complete the survey, they’re met with an appreciative message and a discount to their next event. This not only allows participants to feel heard, it also encourages repeat purchases. Behind the scenes, the data would live in one location for administrators to sort though, a current problem we discovered during the stakeholder meeting.

The Next Steps

Due to significant time constraints, we were unable to conduct primary research beyond initial usability testing. Focusing on the services and features that I created, I would start by doing a quick service prototype on the Job Shadow Program. I’d want to build out a low-touch way of connecting members, streamline communication between the connected members, and define success metrics.

I’d also conduct a card sort of their navigation categories to ensure our recommendations simplified the user experience.

Further out recommendations could include:

• Incentive for testimonials: Enticing people to write about their experience to further promote RSP’s values and events through stories.

• Testimonial Success Story Highlight: Highlight the inspiring stories from women who have been through the RSP experiences

• SEO Analytics: Understand who your audience is and how to better reach them and make organizations to cater to their needs and wants.