Elevating sales process with user testing

Overview

The product that is the subject of this case study is, to put it mildly, one of a kind. I found out about it when I joined the team, trying to apply the research methods I knew so far (mainly desk research, including benchmarking, competition analysis, looking at solutions from other products - methods known to most of us).

The biggest challenge was finding similar products and when I realized that the above-mentioned methods would be difficult to achieve the intended effect, which was one from the very beginning - to create a product that doesn't make people think!

Then I faced another challenge - how to convince decision-makers that user testing is valuable?

I'll be happy to tell you!

But first, what exactly I wanted to elevate?

Let's call it "My Happy Place" - a web-based mobile and desktop application dedicated to a specific target group. It is an international community that regularly meets several times a year in a unique place with traditions.

This community highly values ​​interpersonal relationships, time spent together and faith in God.

Our product, available only to members of this community, solves such problems as:

• Obtaining membership
• Concluding a hotel agreement allowing for the use of the community's accommodation base on the basis of perpetual usufruct
• Purchasing an appropriate hotel agreement tailored to user needs
• Making reservations on behalf of yourself or family members

In this case study, we will take a look at how we improved the sales process in a 2-week design sprint based on validating ideas in the early phase of the project.

Problem statement

Solution implemented in 2023 (which was totally new in app, before sales process was handled outside of app using combination of forms, direct sales and required much more human resources) was a big milestone to automate sales processes but... there is always something to improve.

The biggest issue for users but also for organisation was fact that help desk received many questions regarding hotel agreements. These information in previous approach for sales was passed on directly to customers by sales.

We missed that part and our goal in one sentence was "Reduce workload of helpdesk by providing proper information during sales process in app". I also used this opportunity to point other paint points and solve them.

User and audience

Product is dedicated for membership of christian community. We differenciate four user types across whole community.

Working process and action taken

The beginning of work on the sales process was a bit chaotic, as it overlapped with the appearance of a new product manager in the team. However, it quickly turned out that our visions of working on the product were aligned. We had collected general feedback from users collected during last year's sale of hotel contracts. I proposed to carry out the first iteration of changes based on the information we already had and a quick validation of the new sales process through tests with our users.

Gethering user's feedback, help desk questions about previous sales process

What did we learn from these insights?

• The biggest issue was lack of information about hotel agreements and questions about categories, points and prices were most common,
• I also noticed that many question also were about: how the sales process will look like in general? when we will get offers? when we will be able to sign our upgraded or new hotel agreements? I decided that these questions we can also reduce by providing proper information in app,
• There definitely were areas of improvement in visual layer, that was also taken into account.

Translation of user stories & flows into design

Together with product manager we focused on user stories we want to cover, in next step I've created user flows based on it. I believe that user flows are one of the best way for business and product team during early exploration find a common language. It is also a time-saver, a lot of redundant views was not created!

Some of most crucial stories:

• As a new member, I want to purchase hotel agreement, so that I will be able to take part in events.
• As a new member, I want to know which agreement is suitable for my needs, so that I will get what Im really going to use.
• As a hotel agreement owner, I want to upgrade my agreement, so that I will ensure that my family will experience better quality of upcoming stays.
• As a user who want to buy/upgrade agreement, I want to know how the process is going to look like, so that I will be more relaxed about it and can prepare budget for new agreement/budget.
• As a user who is going to upgrade hotel agreement & have existing financing, I want to know how can I manage my payment, so that I will make a decision that suits me and my needs.

...and many more.

And we turn pain points into new layouts and flows:

Improvement of price calculation section

Reminders what each point category give

Sales process step by step explained

At a later phase we learn from our users that timeline is relevant only during first user interaction with sales process so we provided functionality for collapsing and expanding timeline on demand.

Financing application as a separate flow

Validation of ideas

I had designs ready, sprint in the middle - so that was high time for user testing. i focused on prototype (thanks Figma for new functionalities) which took only.. 7 hours. You can check outcome here

With support of product manager we tested around 15 user from all target groups (most of them were from family section - 7, mostly they had most complex flows due to spouse consent). And we get know event more about our solutions.

We conducted two more rounds of testing with solutions for these problems above and.. met users expectations.

Outcomes and takeaways

Sales process was launched on first part of July and users were submitting their application until the end of August. We compared amount of question to help desk related to hotel agreements, point category and financing in exactly the same period in 2023 and 2024. Let these numbers speak for themselves.

*we have around 12 000 users around the world

Questions about hotel agreements

Doubts related to point categories

Amount of people who need help with financing application

*We assumed that finances will always be the most sensitive part of this process so even if the outcome is not spectacular, we moved forward!

During summer we were working on another big functionality - I didn't had to encourage anyone anymore for user testing. And that was the goal - to answer for question. "How to enhance decision-maker that user testing is crucial to met the user user & business goals?".

What else we achieved?

On retrospective I was really happy to hear from our dev team that working on sales process was very satisfying. Why? Less changes in scope during implementation, less edge cases we didn't care earlier (it happens many times before), more time to focus on good guality code. Honey for my heart!

Thank You for Your attention