Brittany Bellanca

Product Designer | UX Strategist

Hey there! I'm an experienced Product Designer who enjoys creating intuitive visual interfaces and interactive experiences with multi-disciplinary teams.

Designing a tool to capture and share essential information

Standardization of the client onboarding process to optimize cross-team communication

Project Overview

Existing State

As our client base quickly grew, it became apparent that early client touch points lacked a unified approach leading to inconsistent information collection.

The Goal

To build a solution that would standardize and streamline the client onboarding process, making the experience more effective for all involved

Highlighted Skills

User research, need validation, feature prioritization, iterative prototyping, usability testing, platform integration, process optimization

Key Results

Reduced Onboarding Call time from an average range of 30-45 minutes down to a consistent average of 15 minutes
Reduced time-to-launch from an average of eight weeks to three weeks for restaurants with one to five locations
Of clients who signed up before their Onboarding Kickoff Call, over 50% completed some or all of the Self-Onboarding flow.
A new policy was drafted (and later implemented) to cap rounds of website revisions based on client's tier of service.

Popmenu creates easy-to-use restaurant technology solutions that empower restaurant owners to take charge of their online presence.

Products include customized websites, interactive menus, and controllable reviews that aim to attract and engage guests, drive more transactions, and build long-term loyalty.

Onboarding Managers

A client's point of contact while their platform is being set up; included menus, photography, website launch & more

Website Designers

Contractors who specialized in both design & HTML/CSS coding; multiple designers may contribute to a single site

Popmenu Clients

Traditionally restaurant owners or managers, or occasionally, marketing & social media professionals

Capturing information from new clients was a critical first step.

When a restaurant becomes a client, a 30 minute introductory call was scheduled with an Onboarding Manager to collect essential information about the business like their locations, hours, and domain credentials.

However, new clients were very excited...and they talked...a lot. Additionally, clients were very busy and it was difficult to get them back on the phone later; if they were willingly giving extra information, it was critical to capture it as soon as possible.

So, onboarding calls would consistently last 45 to 60 minutes.

But sometimes, the information collected wasn't quite right.

Even though Onboarding Managers delivered every bit of information that a new client shared, sometimes it still wasn’t the information that Website Designers needed to complete a strong initial build.

So, the Designer would need to request the information they needed from the Onboarding Manager, and the Onboarding Manager would ask the client. If we skipped these conversations, Website Designers had to guess at what the client wanted.

Without conversations, we saw frustrated responses from clients as their website preview did not meet their expectations.

Working the Project

Growth Stage Startup

Fall 2020 • The Popmenu team is just starting to expand and bringing new team mates on means we need to standardize processes.

Self-initiated Side Project

I noticed a gap during the Client Onboarding process so I explored the situation and prototyped solutions in the background of my primary tasks.

Fully Remote Team

I collaborated with Onboarding Managers and Website Designers, and later with a Product Manager, Product Designer, and several Engineers.

Grouped stickies from data collection

What information needs to be shared for website previews to be considered successful?

I interviewed Onboarding Managers and Website Designers to more deeply understand their experience and perspective in how they contribute to impactful website previews. I also reviewed a random selection of client emails and calls from various stages of the onboarding journey to gather their point of view.

I used Affinity Mapping to organize and analyze the data reported as "essential for success" by all users. Five core groups were revealed: Location, Menus, Images, Pages, and Site Styles.

Insight: Working with those impacted by any proposed solution was a great way to earn buy-in and trust early on.

Iterative prototyping and rounds of feedback inspired solution design.

I created quick prototypes and sought feedback from Onboarding Managers, Website Designers, and their leaders to mold this solution into one that benefited all parties.

First iteration

Second iteration

Third iteration

First Iteration

I decided to take a very old school, but also cost-effective, approach for version one - a Google document! The thought was that Onboarding Managers could use this document as sort of a “script” to ensure they collected essential information from the new client during their initial onboarding call.

Feedback

Onboarding Managers shared constructive feedback that consisted of both positive remarks on the document's potential and critical comments regarding how systematic it felt. They expressed concern that they wouldn't feel like they could be personable selves if they were reading a script.

New challenge: How can we standardize the information collected while allowing for individual personalities to shine through?

Second Iteration

The second iteration was set up to prompt the Onboarding Managers memories. With all extra conversational aspects removed, the Onboarding Manager could rearrange the order of questions in a way that worked for them and simply type in the answers they received from the client during the call.

Feedback

While Onboarding Managers liked the idea of customizing the way the collected info, they did not like this iteration. They believed it would be overwhelmingly difficult to have authentic conversation with the client AND type up meaningful answers for the Website Designers to use during the build.

Small setback: This was a prototype Onboarding Managers were unwilling to test but the did reaffirm their desire for a change. Now worries - we'll keep trying!

Third Iteration

For the next iteration, I tried using a web form to display questions and collect answers. With this, I could include methods of answering beyond basic typing inputs. So, I incorporated new fields like checkboxes and drop downs while grouping form content into the five groups identified earlier.

Feedback

The Onboarding Managers were super excited by this prototype! They loved the way the questions with suggested answers should reduce the amount of typing. And, they felt it was flexible enough to complete in an order that worked for each client. And, Onboarding Managers were eager to test this out!

It was important that Onboarding Managers felt comfortable using this form with clients.

I listened in on a few client calls with different Onboarding Managers while they used the form. I too filled out a form for the client during the call, then I compared the responses from each looking for consistency.

As Onboarding Managers used the form, they continued sharing feedback. After processing, I would make a few tweaks and check back in after another few calls.

Follow up conversations ensured questions stayed relevant and client answers provided the right information for successful builds.

I conducted check-ins with users every two weeks. As the Popmenu product grew, I updated the form to include new features and options as they became available.