All Things Analysis

Approach

The founders of All Things Analysis had an idea to use their analytical skills to provide predictions supported by data. My task was designing this website about statistics and analytics. As a part of the founding team I have been a part of this project from its inception. Therefore my involvement needed to start from square one by identifying a core demographic. To Identify a core demographic of users I carried out market research to see what type of people like both data and analysis. 3 core target groups emerged: millennials, young professionals and sports lovers. Since the company's initial content was sports related, it made more sense to continue along a niche path for now and expand later.

The initial strategy was to appeal to both financial and sports audiences as this was the background of the content creators on the site. Under my guidance we focused on refining the product experience for the sports enthusiast audience in order to expedite the design and simplify the initial direction. Identifying the persona helped shape the goals for the design of All Things Analysis as a niche business that appeals to sports lovers in the long term.

Performing a competitive analysis was then key to make sure ATA could compete with others in the market for the sports lover persona. We checked a few different companies and identified the features that made them unique. By looking at companies with similar goals and assessing their strengths and weaknesses we were able to hone in on opportunities for our company to take market share. These areas of opportunities became key areas of focus for my design and the content direction of the site.

Since I don’t know much about sports, I also decided to interview users who match our persona to get a better idea of their process when it comes to watching sports, playing fantasy football, and analyzing sports data on the web with all the competitors. Their process consisted of looking at the team and player tables in our competitor websites where they can filter out certain data about the player or the team.

Their process showed us that the single most important thing for a sport analysis website is an easy to understand table. How do we make a table that shows all necessary data in a user-friendly manner? How do we direct people who view data to the rest of the website? How do we convert table views into new user signups?

At this point, it was clear that the MVP was the data table with predictions on it. To test this out, I designed a user flow where the user needs to find out Ezekiell Elliot’s ranking for a particular week. Users would have to go to the rankings page from the landing page, then click the running back column to find Ezekiel Elliot or use the search button. Both these processes end up in a sign up pop up and encourages users to sign up for free. After the sign up, they can see Ezekiel Elliot’s rankings. After locating Ezekiel Elliot’s ranking, the user is prompted to continue to browse where they then scroll down to the related posts. Here they are shown other articles and podcasts related to Ezekiel Elliott, the cowboys, and football. The user will continue to spend time on the site consuming further content achieving the website's goal as a content provider.

We tested this in Maze.co and it failed initially due to the lack of clear messaging that the sign-up was free. Many user’s abandoned the test during the sign-up step. After making improvements to the flow we saw a better conversion rate within the test among users who took the test on the proper type of device.

Results

The sign up page is a pop up that many people tried to exit without a facebook or google login. Users assumed that it was a premium table and didn’t want to pay, so they decided to quit. Key improvements included clear messaging that the sign up was free and necessary to see the rest of the rankings. Additionally, we eased the burden of creating a new account by allowing users to sign up with their google or facebook account. Not only did these improvements lead to better conversion on the test, the actual site results have improved as well (10% of all users have signed up with a google or facebook account).

Outcomes and Lessons

An analytics company has a lot to offer the average person when it comes to insights, but info needs to be presented in a user friendly and digestible format. For example, the rankings table needed to be readable, yet contain a lot of detailed information. In order to enhance the navigation of the site, a search filter was added.

It is easy to get lost in large blocks of data and text so having concise descriptions and graphic representations helps engage users and present the data more clearly. People are willing to create an account for information that they care about, so knowing when to encourage people to sign up was crucial in getting more users to subscribe to the platform.

Having the sign in pop up in the middle of the rankings page wasn’t as successful as I thought. Many users failed the test because they thought that they needed to sign up to a premium service.

To combat that, I added a sign up with Facebook and Google buttons to the design. This addition clarified the user confusion around the service and test success rate went from 50% to 89%. If people think that they need to create a new password, or pay for a new account then the threshold of value needs to be very high and there is likely to be a lot of drop off so I had to clarify that this is a free account by indicating the signups with Facebook and Google.

Conclusion

Ultimately, designing the All Things Analysis platform from scratch while the product was being developed provided many challenges as the creators were still defining their user base and product direction. This provided me with a unique opportunity to direct some of the product with the market research and user research I conducted. Since the team was not 100% set in their direction I was able to influence the website more than most designers would have had the opportunity too. This enabled me to provide actionable insights and designs that could be incorporated into the design and product concurrently while also being able to see the impact of those design changes in the traffic and performance of the website almost immediately.

The results of this design process were very clear - a content based website needs to be understandable to be impactful. If the goal of the website is to establish subscribership then the threshold for the value in the content needs to be high. Additionally, users do not like creating frivolous accounts or providing new information if it is unclear that the account may not be free or requires extra effort. Concise and clear messaging while also reducing the effort of the user has led to higher conversion for All Things Analysis, and this knowledge can be applied to future companies that I work with.

Next steps for All Things Analysis will be to increase the amount of content, and valuable insights in order to increase their users. As they build out their product, the organization of the content will be increasingly more important so that users can easily find content that’s important to them without exerting too much effort.