Boosting Feature Visibility

Pivotal Product Tour Design That Amplified Awareness by 60%

Role

Led Team of 4 Designers & 3 Developers

Context

In-app feature for 25K users

Experience

End-to-End, Design Systems

Impact Highlights

Launched the business's first product tour that boosted awareness of the new Home Page by 60%, directly accelerating feature uptake and adoption.
Built a scalable tour template to consistently achieve high user adoption across all feature releases.

Here's the whole story…

Issues to be Fixed

Users are unaware of new enhancements- For several years, we’ve consistently heard users' frustration with not being alerted to new enhancements. They are very busy with their workload and often don’t have time to check their emails that alert them to new in-app features or they don’t have time to attend demos of new enhancements.

“It’s really frustrating when (this system) is constantly being changed on us without any warning” - System User

Product owners are unaware of usage - Once new enhancements are launched in the system, the product owners and the design/development teams are unaware how well the enhancement has been accepted. Tracking adoption rates would give us a better picture of usage.

Designer and Developer Collaboration

I established a designer and developer collaborative workflow that was approved by both disciplines. Agreeing upon the workflow helped set expectations and resulted in an intuitive product that was feasible and accurate to the design.

Impact Highlights

Launched the business's first product tour that boosted awareness of the new Home Page by 60%, directly accelerating feature uptake and adoption.
Built a scalable tour template to consistently achieve high user adoption across all feature releases.

Here's the whole story…

Issues to be Fixed

Users are unaware of new enhancements- For several years, we’ve consistently heard users' frustration with not being alerted to new enhancements. They are very busy with their workload and often don’t have time to check their emails that alert them to new in-app features or they don’t have time to attend demos of new enhancements.

“It’s really frustrating when (this system) is constantly being changed on us without any warning” - System User

Product owners are unaware of usage - Once new enhancements are launched in the system, the product owners and the design/development teams are unaware how well the enhancement has been accepted. Tracking adoption rates would give us a better picture of usage.

Designer and Developer Collaboration

Ideation

We researched best practices for product tours and brainstormed different design options. After discussing it with my design team, we decided on the following features:

Give users a peek of what they can expect to see while being concise.
Popup should be near feature so that users can’t miss it. Based on typical page layouts within the system, users are rarely looking at the bottom right side of the page.

Key Design Features

Plain language for easy comprehension
Simple graphics that provide a hint of what users can expect
Same color family as rest of design system while still strong contrast with the rest of the page
Tracking on buttons to measure usage

Tour Flow

15 seconds after logging in, show “Check it out” popover next to feature.
Users can choose between “Check it out”, “No thanks”, and “Don’t ask me again”
If users select “Check it out”, they will be directed to the second popover.

Key Design Features

Plain language for easy comprehension
Simple graphics that provide a hint of what users can expect
Same color family as rest of design system while still strong contrast with the rest of the page
Tracking on buttons to measure usage

Tour Flow

15 seconds after logging in, show “Check it out” popover next to feature.
Users can choose between “Check it out”, “No thanks”, and “Don’t ask me again”
If users select “Check it out”, they will be directed to the second popover.

a pair of cell phones on a concrete block

a cell phone with a yellow rectangular screen

How did we do?

The tour was removed after two weeks to avoid disrupting daily users who likely had already viewed it. Overall, the tour successfully increased awareness of the new Home Page. Using Matomo Analytics Tracking, we found that: