How might we make backlinks more mobile friendly and accessible to both entrepreneurs and agencies?
The importance of SEO optimization is ever increasing as more businesses find success online. Searcheye.io allows customers to purchase backlinks, Link inserts, and other SEO resources with a click of a button. I worked on making SearchEye’s web-app experience feel seamless and suit the needs of all levels of SEO understanding–optimized for both desktop and mobile. I learned lots being the sole designer owning all aspects of the design from userflows → Wireframes → Prototype → QA. It was challenging but fun working with a team of software devs to create a friendlier mobile experience.
As SearchEye’s email newsletter gained more of success, we noticed that many of our clients were accessing our websites on their phones. However, the website was not mobile responsive and many clients opted to send emails requesting a specific order instead. This created a huge workload on our account managers and caused frustration for our clients.
We were acquiring new leads through our newsletter, but our sales didn’t match that growth.
80% of our users were still sending back orders through email
Our account managers had to sift through on average of 100 emails a day managing new order inquiries.
The challenge lied in a split of client type: 60% of our customers are SEO Agencies (power users), the other 40% were entrepreneurs (new users who aren’t very familiar with the SEO space). Needs for both groups are vastly different.
Although tables provided an easy way to scan a list of multiple products at once, it created a clunky horizontal scroll on Mobile and made it difficult to see the whole listing. Customers just want to get a general idea of what each product entails before they take a more detailed look and add customizations. Product cards were the way to go! I took inspiration from a few of the greats (e.g. Wealthsimple, Medium, Airbnb, Asana, Google Domains) to see how they adapted their desktop app to fit on a mobile screen or vice versa.
With the new card layout, we had to change our customization process to be more modular. Rather than having one long customization form, designing a modal which holds all the product information and customization properties allows users to scan and compare products quickly. This means they don’t lose their spot in their shopping experience and can easily see if this link opportunity is a right fit for them.
As we launched the new design, we received feedback from our account managers that many customers were still emailing with questions about the link opportunities. Although the ordering process was simpler, the information hierarchy wasn’t clear. I surveyed our trusted clients to get a better sense of what customers truly prioritized when they were shopping for opportunities.
It turns out, customers cared most about the Domain Rating, contrary to what we thought before (The Article Title). 57% of responses voted Domain Rating as most important. Followed by Traffic Statistics, then Domain URL.Here is the new ranking of importance according to survey results:
Although we discovered that Article Title was only 6th on our customer’s rank of importance, the product team knew that the Article Title and Mention Type will become important as the business moves away from showing the domain URL (Some websites ask for brand privacy). My final product hierarchy list was:
Since the launch of our the new ordering page, the company has seen an increase of orders made through the platform by 40%. Overall client acquisition has grown especially within the startup community.
As the business progresses and the product line evolves, there will be iterations which might change the hierarchy of the product card details. The most important lesson I took away from this project is to constantly ask for feedback. Having good intuition is great as a starting point, but getting user and customer feedback can reveal gaps in the initial design. Especially in a Startup environment when being the only designer may feel lonely, I’ve learned to not be afraid to ask for feedback from teams who work outside of product. I’ve had great brainstorming sessions with our account managers who work closely with clients. They often have the best feedback and are amazing in brainstorming workshops.
