Partner Fleet
Redesigning onboarding flows and a full site redesign to promote self-service.
Web App Redesign
Data-based Design
B2B SaaS
90% 80% 4/4
Reduction in support calls Reduction in time to onboard Successful self-service
Partner Fleet is a white label marketplace platform that provides a full tech stack solution for partners and vendors making it easy to focus on building partner relations.
Onboarding is a huge lift - requiring time, resources, and buy-in from all decision-makers. Partner Fleet is looking to strike a balance between automation and personalized service when onboarding partners onto their marketplace platform.
We performed competitor research based on examples the client provided, then comparative research and multiple interviews with Project Development Managers to specifically target and learn about onboarding at multiple companies and what made the experience successful, engaging, and informative as well as preferred methods of engagement by users when learning a new application and how they want to be introduced to new actions.
From the information gathered we created a persona, PDM, who represented the frustrations, needs and behaviors of our ideal user.
By aligning business and user needs, the direction we should take in designing a solution becomes incredibly clear:
The end-to-end experience of onboarding in a self-service manner had some clear friction points that wouldn't strictly be resolved by a redesign. It's necessary to define success metrics and what the web app can achieve by fulfilling user & business goals.
We performed a heuristic evaluation of the administration-facing portion of the web app while exploring the marketplace and partner page user flows.
Based on the two flow evaluations we determined there were 5 rules being violated, 3 of which were a high priority. We based priority on the following:
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I don't agree that this is a usability problem at all
Cosmetic problem only; fix if time is available
Minor usability problem; fixing this should be given low priority
Major usability problem; important to fix, given high priority
Usability catastrophe; fix this before the product can be released
The existing user flows and site maps were in constant flux. Working alongside Partner Fleets developer we were able to access an in-process site map.
We condensed the site map further to reduce depth, making it more user-friendly.
From the new site map, we reworked the primary user flow which houses 2 to 3 separate flows within.
This new overarching flow was made with several assumptions in mind:
Based on the heuristic evaluation, the current web app has strength in its simple and minimal design, the match between system and real world, user control, and ability to diagnose as well as easily recover from errors. However, recognition was difficult, visibility of system status didn't exist, and the help & documentation was difficult to parse and full of technical jargon unrelated to the field.
The redesign should address existing frustrations by utilizing consistency, informing the user and engaging them with easily navigatable solutions.
Before beginning the full redesign we built a mood board consisting of Partner Fleet's current dark green and expanded on the range and saturation with additional colors, also taking care to make note of the constellation influences on their landing page.
The home page was nice but lacked informative options for new users. Unless users already knew of Partner Fleet by word of mouth it was difficult to discern their services and solutions.
The main site had no direct login due to how Partner Fleet's backend is set up but we tried to take into account new implementations they said were in the works.
The initial dashboard was text-heavy with no visuals. I took the setup pane and built a flow around it that reduced text overload, taking care to emphasize the setup with a highlight and limiting access to the rest of the dashboard features until after the publication of their marketplace.
The previous marketplace had users select visual options without visual confirmation of their choice. We updated it to have mid-fidelity options that are displayed in hi-fidelity on the right-side panel. To avoid information overload the sections that aren't being altered have been dimmed.
A progress bar was added that fills as the user completes each section of the marketplace setup flow, this way the user knows where they are at in the current flow and can return to the exact point they left off if they save it as a draft.
CSS Customizations didn't have visible options for the user, we corrected this by giving users visible color options and a preview pane to see how they apply.
The former partner page editor just had text fields and a drag-and-drop preview.
We kept the drag-and-drop preview feature but made it a split screen where users select what they want to add from the left side and are guided through the selection process by a highlighted UI.
For our iteration of the company information page, we added a visual display for where images will be shown on the Partner Page header and created interactive calendars for the activation date selection.
Partner/Vendor setup needed to be implemented in a way that was easily repeatable as it's the highest traffic portion of the partner page flow.
We added the ability to add multiple vendors at once to reduce clicks.
The dev team informed us that our suggestion of merging the analytics and insights pages were already in process and they were looking at a customizable dashboard so we implemented that into the end of the onboarding flow.
Our final prototype consists of the login, marketplace setup flow, page builder flow, and partner page flow.
After our presentation to the stakeholders and dev team, we received incredibly positive feedback on the visual redesign of the site, something the CEO mentioned they had been hesitant to do, but now felt confident after seeing our design solution.
For the 3 separate user flows we created, they loved the accordion design and we had a discussion over how the Partner Page Builder takes you out of that flow, and perhaps it should be separate entirely so the accordion style flows match seamlessly.
The page builder flow was difficult to implement visually as it couldn't follow the same design patterns as the marketplace and partner flows. However, the CEO and dev team informed us they have multiple uses for the altered flows and will be applying them to different aspects of their site.