Start-Up Nation Central
UX designer / Usability researcher
My Role
Client
Start-up Nation Central.
As part of my work at Brio studio, 2019
Project Overview
Type of Work
Heuristic evaluation- Usability research
The Need
Identify bottlenecks in the user flow
The Solution
Carry out a usability testing study and offer measurable solutions, in line with the technical capabilities of the team.
Usability Research Process
User and Product
Usability Testing
Usability Issues
The Users and the Product
I started the process, by understanding who the users are and what their needs are, as well as what the product is about and the value it provides.
I reached out to friends, and friends of friends, through FB and LinkedIn, who are users of Startup Nation Central (SNC) Finder, and conducted phone interviews to understand why they use the SNC Finder, how often they use it, how they conduct their research, which SNC features they use and if they refer to any other databases.
The Users I Interviewed
Startup owners
BI consultants
Startup Hub directors
VC employees
Startup and investor connectors
Tour operators who cater to investors who are interested in startups
Their Needs
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Finding information on Startups/Investors, that is up to date.
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Conducting efficient and fast research
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Keeping up to date with the Startup ecosystem in Israel
The Product
To understand the product and its value, I went through all of the material on the website, mapped user flows, read online reviews, and interviewed the Product Manager. I looked into competitors such as Pitchbook, IVC, and mapped in Israel to see what they offer and how the SNC Finder compares to them.
The value that SNC Finders offers is:
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Free database
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Focuses solely on the Israeli startup ecosystem
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Provides information on upcoming technologies developed in academia, hubs, and accelerators, any possible resource that someone with an idea or someone with an available investment, would need to make the right choice.
Usability Testing
The SNC Finder is a massive database with many categories and subsections. The focus was on the homepage, as this is the gateway of the product, and it contains snapshots of information on startup investments, investment trends and new technologies and upcoming startups. Google Analytics also showed that the home page was the page with the most traffic.
With the use of Fullstory, a user activity recording platform and data analytics, I was able to formulate user flows to identify bottlenecks and drops on the user flow.
Below are the top three usability issues, their suggested solutions and how we would be able to measure their success.
Usability Issues
01
Search icon is mistaken for a button by 22% of the users
The most clicked component on the home page was the search icon. Users would click it thinking that it would lead to a search results page, but nothing would happen.
The problem
The recordings showed that users often searched for keywords such as "cybersecurity" but the first results underneath would appear to be names of companies. Users did not really scroll through the results and at times it would take over 45'' to get to the page that lists all the cybersecurity startups.
Suggested solutions:
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Tags First Result - Low effort/Medium value
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Results Tabs - Medium effort/ High value
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Search results page - High effort/High value
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Smarter Search Engine - Very high effort/High value
How will we measure the success of the solutions:
% Increase of clicks in results drop-down menu / Reduction of clicks on the search button
02
Sign up drop out by 48%
Sing-up to the website is required in order to use some of the features such as making collections, getting introductions, and using the search filters.
The problem
The data showed that almost half of the users that were coming to the sign-up pop up were closing the pop-up. This meant that users could not make the most of the product, and SNC can not harvest data. The reasons for the high drop out could be attributed to the requirement to allow to receive informational emails, which feels like spam, and also because the clause itself is far from the sign-up buttons.
Suggested solutions
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Rewrite the copy for the users to understand what value they will be receiving by agreeing to it
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Place the requirement close to the sign-up buttons for a better flow
How will we measure the success of the solutions:
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% Increase in new sign-ups
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% reduction of clicks on the “close button”
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% Increase of “Intro requests”
When users were browsing and when they needed to sign up in order to see more information ad.
The problem
When logging in, the users were not returned to the original page where they were. If they needed to get back on this page they would need to redo the whole process of how they got there...if they remembered how...
Suggested solutions:
Keep the user in the page they were during login
How will we measure the success of the solutions:
% Increase time during
browsing
Log-in friction
03
04
Trending investments graph eligibility
When users were browsing and when they needed to sign up in order to see more information ad.
The problem
The finder provides a graph which shows the verticles that receive the most developments. Users who are interested in understanding the trends and developments in the ecosystems refer to it. In fact, about 18% of the users engage with it. Unfortunately, the design does not give enough way for cases of overlapping data. This is not only bad UX, it decreases discoverability and engagement.
Suggested solutions:
Redesign the graph
How will we measure the success of the solutions:
% Increase in engagement
Next Steps
After the findings were presented the client they were put on a backlog.
The work was continued by another designer after I left the company.
The tools I used
FullStory and Google Analytics - for collecting data
Excell - for crunching the numbers
The work I did
User Research
Market Research
Usability Research
Data analysis
Problem Solving
Presentation of Findings, their Analysis, and Solutions
Worked directly with the client