Senior Product Designer
Alumnet B2B Dashboard.png

Alumnet

Project Type

  • Startup

  • Redesign

  • B2C & B2B

Skills used

  • Product Strategy

  • UX Research

  • Analysis

  • UX Writing

  • Wireframing

  • Prototyping

  • Visual Design

  • Design System

  • UI Design

Tools used

  • JIRA

  • Google Analytics

  • Sketch

  • InVision

  • Typeform

  • Hotjar

  • Unbounce

Project DURATION

9 Months • January 2018 - September 2018

Alumnet is an early-stage startup building a brand-new alumni engagement platform for schools in the UK

At the start of 2018, my focus moved from the iOS app onto the Alumnet website, working closely with the CEO to create the overall product strategy. I opted to set quarterly objectives and key results (OKRs) alongside creating a more traditional product roadmap to detail the improvements we needed to make to the current MVP. I made sure to involve the whole team with the process of setting the OKRs, which kept everyone aligned, motivated and invested in their success.


Problem

I identified Alumnet's riskiest assumption as the older alumni in the network - those that could bring the most value - being incentivised to be engaged and offer this value to the network.

While the evidence already demonstrated recent graduates' motivation to leverage their alumni network for advice and job opportunities, it was less clear that the older alumni would be motivated or incentivised to offer this help.

Hypothesis

By conducting interviews and surveying existing users, I would be able to understand their motivations for using Alumnet and quantify their willingness to offer advice and support.

Process

I spoke at length with the CEO to understand why Alumnet had been created and studied the existing user research and marketing material. 

It used four themes as value propositions and reasons for joining the Alumnet - career advice, job opportunities, business support, and reconnecting with friends. As many users had already signed up, I created a survey using Typeform to understand what each of those value propositions meant to them.

The survey asked the participant to rank their interest in each value proposition on a scale of 1 - 5. Crucially, I split out the value propositions to understand who was on the demand side (looking for help) and those who were on the supply side (willing to give support). If they scored a three or higher on any of these questions, a follow-up question was asked to allow them to go into further qualitative detail about what they're looking for - as can be seen in the example below. 

An example of one of the surveys results demonstrating users' willingness to offer career advice.

An example of one of the surveys results demonstrating users' willingness to offer career advice.

An example of one of the surveys results demonstrating users' willingness to offer career advice.

Result

The quantitative and qualitative results demonstrated an evident willingness to add value to the network from the older alumni, especially with regards to career advice. Also, I gained more evidence of career advice being a motivation to use the network by recent graduates. 

These results allowed us to understand our user groups better and establish new personas that would help inform our efforts to build a community, matching each group's motivations with the other's willingness - and later ability - to offer help.


Problem

The registration form for the current MVP had a low conversion rate, leading to wasted marketing efforts.

Hypotheses

Using data from Google Analytics, user recordings from Hotjar and user interviews, the following quick wins could be implemented to increase the conversion rate of the registration form:

  • Reducing the number of fields on the registration form (I negotiated the final form with all stakeholders)

  • Adding a button to allow users to pre-fill the form with data from their LinkedIn accounts

  • Creating an MVP version of a dynamic registration page that was specific to each school, pre-filling the school input field with the school name (e.g. Harrow School) and including the alumni nickname of the school in the header (e.g. Old Harrovians).

Results

  • The bounce rate on the registration page fell by 12%

  • 23% of registrations in the following sprint used the pre-fill with LinkedIn button (the average now is at 26%)

  • The registration conversion rate increased by 14%

  • The dynamic registration landing pages (school-specific) converted 21% better than the original form

Iteration

Following the results of the dynamic registration pages that were school-specific, I further personalised the acquisition journey by creating dynamic landing pages for each school, the CTAs of which would lead to the dynamic registration pages we had created.

You can see an example of one of the landing pages below:

Iteration Results

Visits following this more personalised registration journey convert a further 18% higher than the previous iteration.

This redesign gave us a 39% total uplift in registration conversion.


Problem(s)

The user onboarding journey for the MVP had several issues. The drop out rate was high, it wasn't giving us enough useful data about the users, and as a single journey, it didn't differentiate between our known user groups often leading to us asking the users for irrelevant data.

Hypotheses

  • Following the findings of the previous user research, we could now group the user's motivation for using Alumnet into at least 1 of 4 categories

  • Adding a clear explanation as to why we were requesting the data at each step of the onboarding journey and detailing how it would benefit the user and their experience, would help lower the drop off rate in the funnel

  • Segmenting the user's journey to be conditional on their career stage, would prevent us from asking irrelevant questions and also allow us to ask more specific questions around their particular circumstance

  • As users had proved their willingness to help other alumni in the previous surveys, adding a step to the onboarding that would allow them to signal how they were willing to help would help add immediate value to the network

You can click through an example of a dynamic onboarding journey below or click here to view the InVision prototype (suggested)

As stakeholders wanted information that was collected in this previous journey but not included in the redesign, I negotiated to obtain the data at a later date, by designing prompts that would direct users to their profile, where they could add this data.

Results

This redesigned onboarding journey increased conversion by 47% while obtaining better and more useful data that was used to increase engagement across the platform


Problem

The events section of the website provided the potential to be a handy tool for acquisition. However, the MVP didn't allow invites to people who hadn't already joined the network.

Hypothesis

A redesigned event page which included a unique referral link would aid conversion and help drive acquisition.

On receiving the referral link, we would redirect the invitee to a landing page that would show limited details of the event, the details of the person that had invited them and the option to login/register to see the rest of the event details and RSVP.

You can click through an example of the event referral invite journey below or click here to view the InVision prototype (suggested)

Result

The ability to invite others to join the network via this personalised event invitation journey significantly increased acquisition and became the highest converting acquisition channel.


My Network

Due to the earlier research process that lead to the redesign of the onboarding journey, I was able to redesign the 'My Network' page to allow users to filter by the new and improved data we were collecting.

Alumni could now find others in their network who were EIS/SEIS investors, offering job opportunities or were willing to help offer career or business advice.

The 'willing to help' badge significantly increased engagement by giving the younger alumni the courage to send messages to those they wouldn't have before.

 

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