The problem

Seomonitor had four research tools which were external, some where free and some were only available to paid users. The first thing I did was do a UX Audit to understand the concerns with the current tools and how it can be optimised. These were the problem identified.

1. Too many unsystematic patterns.
2. Required more resources to maintain four products.
3. Visual language different from the main application.
4. Users had to sign in on all products.
5. Users had to open multiple tabs to do even the most basic task.
6. System complexity

The solution

Together with a great team of a product manager, QA testers, FE engineers and BE engineers; our goal was to have a dedicated section for the research in the SEOmonitor app, in addition to creating a unified visual language and generate more value with merged products inside the app. Our hypothesis was that we would increase value.

Through several research and workshops, the research team had come to learn the challenges users were experiencing. We got reports of the difference in visual language and complexity of the process. All of this identified the fundamental problem: SEO professionals had to rely on external tools to discover keyword ideas and then bring them to the app to be tracked in order to effectively curate high ranking keywords. 

Design process

I explored simple layouts in alignment with the current visual language of the application as well as other directions which were not systematic. One thing that made the design process faster was leveraging existing components from the existing in-App products, to design systematically. The team had several demo sessions with stakeholders to review and rapidly iterate. The most challenging part of the process were the constraints as we were building for a data intensive application and this required a continuous cycle of iteration. One thing that helped was the daily syncs with the team for status update, to constantly be aligned.

Building Keyword Research

The job to be done was to help SEO professionals research and experiment new keyword ideas to better understand their impact and add the relevant ones to their campaign rank tracking. Keyword Research provides monthly search volume and ranking data insights for the keywords. This product is a light-weight of our Rank Tracker which provide daily search volume and ranking data insights.

Actionable metrics

1. How long it takes users to find value in the product.
2. The amount of keywords added per user/company daily/weekly/monthly.
3. Percentage of users/company that return to the product daily/weekly/monthly.
4. Amount of keywords added to the Rank Tracker daily/weekly/monthly.
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Job stories

Before designing, I created a document with a list of job stories. Each job story helped with constraints and also helped guide my design direction as well as communicate effectively with the team.

Design process

Building the keyword Research was quicker because most of the patterns and components from Keyword Explorer was used. Also because it is a light weight of the Rank Tracker, some flows had similar pattern. With the experience from Keyword Explorer, I Improved in my design process.

Steps in the design process:
1. Different design iterations with rationale
2. Demo with stakeholders
3. Demo synchronisation documentation
4. Re-iterate on design

Discussing systematic approaches with engineers

Had a sync with the Front end engineers about highlighting systematic patterns as it would reduce the time spent on creating components pixel by pixel, as this is a light-weight of an existing product. This made my design process faster and also made development faster for the engineers.

Testing with internal users

After several months of collaboration, research, testing and iteration, the research team was ready to ship the new and simpler SEO research experience. But, because we were working on a product that would have costly implications for both our business and that of the customers, we knew shipping a complete product might lead to disaster. We looked at our options and data and decided on users who were still using the deprecated keyword research. We needed to target them to give us valuable feedback in order to make improvements, catch bugs, and ship incomplete features without completely disastrous effects.

Early signals were promising: Users liked that they were able to discover keyword ideas in the application, navigate to other products of the application, all from a single interface.

Final product

Incredible result

After months of collaboration, testing and successful team work, we launched the new and improved SEO research tools. The new SEO research tool is now a fully fledged part of the Seomonitor web application. MVP was deployed on time and all components and patterns are systematic. We are still monitoring users sessions with full story and making improvements but so far we have: