DESCRIPTION
Redesigning Contact Page
TIMELINE
Jan - Mar 2021
TEAM
1 Product Manager, 2 Engineer, Solo Designer
Introduction
MAST is used by more than 3,000 real estate syndicators and contact management is a core feature of our platform. Despite this, there was little information on the page and few options for taking action. Throughout the redesign, I focused on:
🧩 Improving contact management
💥 Increasing user engagement
💨 Helping users to achieve their goals faster.
My Role
Idea Generation, Discovery & Ideation, Wireframing, UI Design.
Problem
A good CRM should enhance the value of managing contacts, but our CRM didn’t provide any ability to:
😔 Filter or search contacts within the page.
😪 Follow up or track contacts to close the deal.
😭 Only one contact can be added at a time.
☹️ There is no way to message all contacts at once, and you must open each contact individually to message them.
😢 Difficult to scan contacts
"How might we redesign a better experience for the users to take more action and close deals?"
Our Goal
Success meant being able to add contacts in bulk and easily follow up with contacts. For our users, our primary goal was to launch a simple way to track contacts and follow up with them on investments. Introducing tags let them tag their contacts and message them a group of contacts.
⚡️ Simplify the process of filtering contact.
🏷 Create tags and reminders for each contact individually or in bulk to track them.
🕓 Discover status and last contacted.
➕ Add contacts and message them in bulk.
What we end up shipping?
A picture is worth a thousand words, so let’s just cut to the big reveal.
Impact
This was a huge project, we released the new designs in phases.
🥳 The engagement rate increased by 120%.
➕ Within a month, roughly 4.5k contacts were added. Thanks to the new feature of bulk-adding contacts.
🏷 26% increase in users who tagged contacts in the first month itself.
🔔 52% of users used reminders for follow-up.
Filter Contacts
One of the user goals was to filter contacts according to their requirements. With multiple filters and the ability to save them, it was easier for sponsors to keep track of contacts. Also, sponsors could more effectively contact investors with this feature. Additionally, the sponsor could hide or delete saved filters.
In order to make it more powerful, we chose to use nested filters. It acts essentially as a sub-filters in that you can define a hierarchy of filters. This allows you to have the ability to slice your database data in a more specific way.
Add Tag
Sponsors can tag their contacts either individually or as groups. By using tags, sponsors could separate or categorize different types of contacts. This enables sponsors to easily search for specific groups of contacts within your database.
For single contacts, the user can add tags inline; however, for bulk contacts, the user is taken to a modal window. In the case of multiple tags, the most recent tag was displayed and the others were listed in three dots.
Add Reminder
In order for the user to follow up with his contacts, he can set up a reminder directly. This use case was designed to remove the dependencies between different platforms. Users can check all the upcoming reminders on the contact page as well as on the dashboard.
Add Contacts in Bulk
As of now, adding contacts individually is tedious and time-consuming for our users. We found that this was one of the most requested features by our users. We expect that as contacts increase, sponsor engagement will also grow and sponsors will be able to close more deals on our platform.
Iterate, Iterate, Iterate
There were numerous variations of the contact page layout. Before diving into the details, I first sketched the high-level ideas to get the rough ideas down on paper.
Early Designs
I began designing variations in Figma after throwing ideas and flows on paper. After showing my manager the designs I was most sure of, I would get feedback and work on them again. Each detail was subtle, and I felt like I was trying to put all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together.
Initially, I wanted to convert the table into a card view so that it can be stacked properly.
Exploring Card View
I continued to look down the card view, claiming it looked visually appealing and the information was arranged properly. I played around fully and trying to reduce card size.
Exploring Filter
A filter option was implemented in the modal and the card was expanded fully. While it gave me a clean look, there was too much whitespace, which would make scanning difficult.
Back to Table View
Feedback reminded me of our goals — quickly scan and take action. I moved away from the card, as it contradicted our belief that everything should be easily viewed. Additionally, I tried to make a movable table.
Final Design
Once I had landed on a few options, I conducted several tests to choose the best one. In summary, people liked the idea of seeing all information and choices in one place.
Filters needed to be kept at a reasonable level so users didn't feel overwhelmed. The data shows that information pertaining to the last contacted and status of contacts were vital to their decision-making. In terms of chronological order, the last contact was more significant than the tags.
Outcome
This was a really exciting and fun project for me to work on as it provides real value, involved a ton of new features, and exploration. I learned some important takeaways from this project related to product and business processes.
You are not the user
I really liked the card view, but users weren’t inclined since they wanted to easily scan it. As well, card view will not help the user achieve their goal if the number is too high.
Don’t overpromise and underdeliver
During the project, I learned how to distinguish an MVP from something that is simply not usable and therefore isn't shippable.
Choosing what we won’t do
With a rich feature set, we could tackle a wide range of awesome use cases. It was important to identify where the real value was for MAST so we did not overextend ourselves.
Easy management and communication
The users were able to bulk upload their contacts and tag them accordingly, which saved tons of time. Reminder helped to follow up with contacts.
I'm Available For Hire
Feel free to reach out to me at my mailbox