OVERVIEW
Gartner Peer Insights Vendor Portal is a platform for software enterprises to list their products and source customer reviews, thus getting their product or services in front of millions of buyers. It helps them drive their business by:
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Providing a platform to showcase their product offerings
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Drive value by unleashing the power of customer reviews
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Drive brand visibility by helping them leverage high-quality reviews
MY ROLE
TEAM
TOOLS
DURATION
STATUS
Design to drive user engagement & Product growth strategy on Gartner Peer Insights Vendor Portal
UX Research
Competitor analysis
UX/UI Design
Usability testing
Product
Design
Engineering
Client specialist
Marketing
Figma
XD
Sketch
Mar'20 - Dec'20
Launched (Iterative)
Context
Exclusive Recognitions such as Customer Choice Awards (CC), Voice of Customer Reports have been good drivers to engage vendors on our portal
Vendors have shown immense excitement only during award seasons which has helped us drive more reviews on the platform, otherwise, there has been little or no engagement.
Problem
As per data (2019), out of 900+ added vendors, 85% were not engaging enough with our platform & failing to source customer reviews.
PI = Peer Insights
CC = Customer Choice distinction
Goals & Success Metrics
Increase engagement with Peer Insights
Increase reviews inflow
CHALLENGE
Explore how to continuously engage vendors and motivate them to source reviews
01
Discover
Understanding space
User Interviews
Identifying key problems
Market research
02
Define
Defining problem statement
Persona creation
Defining user needs and goals
​
​
03
Ideate
Potential solutions
Wireframes​
Prototypes
Feedbacks
Iterations
04
Deliver and Test
Sprint grooming & planning
Design handoff
Launch
Collect more feedback
​
DISCOVERY
Task Analysis
Almost 50% of the vendors were unable to complete the entire journey, thus were not able to source any review.
37% of the vendors were able to source at least 1 review in a month but didn't come back to source more
This task analysis outlines every single task and decision a vendor encounters once they get registered on our platform. This process flow is important because by visualizing all the steps in one graphic, we were able to focus on the pain points and clearly identify potential areas in which we could improve upon.
Potential low engagement reasons
#1 No Education
#2 Lots of friction in completing tasks
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Unware of our Value Propositions
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Don't know how to use our platform
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Confusing platform UX and interface
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Long steps to complete tasks
#3 Lack of motivation
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Don't find value
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No encouragement from our side
NEXT STEP
We wanted to focus on engagement and activation before moving to acquire more vendors on the platform
DISCOVERY
Vendor Interviews and Contextual inquiries
50+ Vendor Interviews were conducted
Goal
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To understand Vendor experience using Peer Insights
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The main goal of using our platform
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Identify problems in current experience
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Vendor Expectation
Outcome
​Gained valuable insight regarding vendors' needs, goals, challenges, and requirements from Peer Insights. This also helped us validate our initial thought on potential reasons for Low engagement
Key takeaways​
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Vendors want to get associated with the Gartner brand
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More reviews help in driving marketing and sales
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Qualitative reviews help in identifying loopholes in their product/service
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Yes, a lot of vendors struggle in getting started on our platform
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Many of them struggle to find value in using our platform
This is what we learned from some successful vendors
01/
Having a reach out strategy
"We adopt different review sourcing strategies like email campaigns, events, social media campaigns, webinars, website
02/
Continuous monitoring of campaigns
"Monitor performance and pushed sourcing more whenever the review inflow reduces"
03/
Continuous check on competitors and market
"I keep checking competitors reviews and read market trends to stay updated
NEED:
Sharable marketing content
and assets
This is what most vendors were struggling with
01/
No help/guidance to source reviews
"I created a campaign but didn't know what to do next..."
02/
Extracting insights
“Currently we use data dump of reviews and do a manual analysis to show to customers. More data insights will make our jobs easier”
03/
Leveraging reviews for marketing
"I manually select review content and prepare posts to share on social media
04/
Anonymous end user activity
“Not sure how many people read reviews PI and any information about who's reading our reviews would be really valuable”
05/
Identify Product positioning and differentiation
“Any data comparing our competitors is very useful. We do a lot of comparison work internally; benchmarking data will be very helpful
NEED:
Data Insights for their product and customers
NEED:
Guidance in sourcing more reviews
NEED:
Guidance in sourcing more reviews
NEED:
Insights, benchmarking to learn about competitors
DISCOVERY
Competitive Analysis
Vendor interviews also helped us identifying other key competitors in the market. The competitive analysis helped in understanding their strengths and weakness so that we could strategize potential opportunities
Key takeaways​
#1 Free set of offerings that includes Understanding of Buyer persona and profiles
This offering helps identify companies that are interested and engaging with the vendors, thus helping them to target potential prospects.
#2 Premium/pro insights to identify key competitors
This offering helps in Understanding their Product positioning, reports include: Pricing reports, benchmarking reports, product satisfaction score
#3 Paid pack to get Insights driven Marketing assets
Social assets for marketing, widgets, Integration with third party Marketing platforms)
Mapping competitors strong and weak offerings to identify opportunities. You can find more details on competitive here.
NEXT STEP
To define the problem statement and work on the persona
We identified 3 main personas using our platform, each having its own goals and needs.:
1. Product Marketers (70%)
2. Analyst relations (20%)
3. Product owners/associates (10%)
DEFINE
Creating Persona
From our interview and research findings, we got to know that
Product Marketers are our largest user base and their need aligns the most with our offerings
So we were hopeful that
If their key challenges are solved can drive consistent engagement and sourcing
PRIMARY PERSONA
More details on Persona can be found here
DEFINE
Journey map of a Product marketer
Outcome
Using the Gartner research paper and vendor interviews, we created an in-depth journey map of a Product marketer. This allowed us to uncover more findings of their emotional journey, especially on their interactions with the vendor portal for each of their job role.
Key takeaways​
#1 Going through each review to extract that one hero line
Both quantitative, as well as qualitative insights, are important, thus vendor has to put extra efforts into understanding the sentiment behind peer opinions and pulling best content out of it
#2 Leverage Product profile for marketing
Due to the limited option of showcasing product-related features on the Peer Insights public platform, they struggle to create a huge impact. People want to know more about things they have found interesting
#3 Not every vendor has resources to create marketing content
Putting time and effort into making market content but targeting the wrong customer base puts all effort into vain. Also, spamming the same customers would not be a good idea as well
#4 Different internal team collaboration requires different insights
The flexibility to extract required insights is a tedious job, that too quickly, since it requires lots of manual work and maintaining a master repository is cumbersome
Time to make some design!
NEXT STEP
To help vendors with details about the reader's activity, we wanted to first deep dive into what kind of data are they looking out for...
We started small by sending them Email notifications on their performance and readers activity
Hero message that is impactful and encouraging
Context of competitors
Clear CTA that redirects to the end goal of sourcing more reviews
Education on value proposition of using Peer Insights
Out of total opened emails, 81% of users found it helpful.
The next step was to iterate design for Readership details
DESIGN
Quick iterations
(Lo - Fidelity)
DESIGN
Quick iterations
(Mid - Fidelity)
1.
To reimagine the vendor dashboard and add a complete guided experience for users which provides performance as well as next steps to take
2.
Adding a "Recent Activities" section to make vendors aware of end-users activity on their product reviews
3.
Mentioning "top competitors" on the page and a detailed view of vendor vs their competitor share in market
Challenge
Less technically feasible considering an MVP launch
Challenge
Detailed end-user activity might breach privacy policy and needed legal team validation
Challenge
Showing competitor detail explicitly might impact privacy and needed legal team validation
NEXT STEP
Final Designs as per cross-team collaboration & user feedbacks
Presenting "Readership Analytics" (Beta version)
Download and Email option to share report internally
Date filter to add flexibility for vendors to manage performance as per time
Your interest in the market displays vendors' interest score in the market
Most viewed in the market displays vendors' position in a market according to their interest score in the market.
More customization to ensure extracting insights and identify the target customer base
The initial launch was given access to limited vendors to gauge their interest and engagement
"Readership is great -Would use it to source reviews in certain region industry etc. -Do a comparative study"
"On first look, I wanted to see the number of readers as percentages might not make much sense. The value prop is overall great."
Let's see how it works
See how we enhanced the review sourcing experience
At this point, Covid'19 struck
STRATEGY
By this point, we also wanted this feature to be viable... which meant there were a lot of strategic factors to consider! How can we grow & monetize it?
GROWTH STRATEGY
Launch "Vendor Portal Pro" and roll out access to Readership Analytics based on no. of reviews sourced
​For eg. Get 50 reviews to get access to Vendor Portal Pro for 12 months.
Get X reviews or buy for $X
But will the Vendors pay money for this?
Yes, but how? ​
Leveraging Gartner Brand value
Promoting honest, unbiased opinions
Continue adding value across persona
GROWTH STRATEGY
Establish a Vendor program that serves as a marketing play
Introducing Customer First program that represents Vendors' commitment of
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Open to reviews from all customers
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​Value and appreciate every opinion
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​ Being transparent
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Presenting a holistic view
View live site for Customer First Program
Customer First Badge
1. Customer First program banner visible on the Vendor portal
Unlock blocker for Readership details
Interest form to be filled
2. Direct vendor reach out through public Customer First marketing page
Once both criteria are met, get access to Readership details + Customer First badge
on the public-facing vendor profile
HOW DOES THIS WORK
Matter of Social Proof and contact to drive more engagement
Readership Analytics could be an exclusive feature to access which there could be easy to complete criteria
RESULT
Early-stage impact
66 vendors interested in Customer First Program in just 2 weeks post-roll-out
35% of interested vendors
implemented the Customer First program in their review sourcing strategy
59% of vendors
were able to unlock Readership details
RESULT
Critical Feedback & Design recommendations
Problem 1: Need more clarity on requirements
"Brought to team's attention... Still in discussions and team need convincing of criteria.
Recommendation
1. Resources for vendors for convincing internal decision-makers (Demo readership, value prop, success stories)
2. ​Consolidated checklist for vendors with requirements
View designed Program overview brochure and Onboarding Guide
Problem 2: Friction for small vendors due to weak profile
Small vendors were struggling with sourcing more reviews to meet program inclusion criteria, they did not want to promote bad reviews
The problem was huge we had to move as efficiently as possible. Initially, I was hung up on small details, later on, I learned that not everything can be done and that prioritizing and sometimes making a compromise is necessary for the team to move on.
How to effectively lead design business problems and work on cross-functional meetings
I had to learn how to set and follow meeting agendas, stir conversations back to the agenda when needed, and decide action items needed from different cross-functions in order for me to progress on the design.
Team work to make or break a decision
Since I am the designer for various other portals of Gartner Peer Insights, it becomes overwhelming to look into each & every aspect of multiple ongoing projects, that's where I get fortunate enough to have an amazing Product management team which supported and pushed me to take decision effectively.
Thanks for reading! :)
REFLECTION
Key learnings from the project
What's essential for an MVP?