OBJECTIVE: What is the best experience for digital marketers to buy ads and set up ad campaigns that could be run on GoFind.AI - one that is comparable, or even superior, to digital ad managers like Facebook Ads or Google AdWords? This project focused on an intuitive design solution that could answer this question.
SOLUTION: The design team built a responsive, scalable ad posting tool meant to be integrated into the GoFind website to allow digital marketers to create and launch marketing campaigns.
Project: GoFind.AI integrated ad posting tool
Team: Ana De Magalhaes, Brad Miller, Jared Miller
Role: Competitive analysis, user research, user flows, sitemap
Timeframe: 3 weeks
Competitive Analysis
The team studied and analyzed the platforms currently leading the digital ad market, both in usability and reach.
Key Findings
Just less than half of the competitors had an ad buying platform available on mobile.
Facebook Ads had the most choices for formats in a mobile platform.
Every competitor except Yahoo offered an analytics platform along with an ad-buying platform.
For ad targeting options, audience and demographics and location were the most consistent across the competition.
For ad objective options, brand awareness, driving traffic, and boosting conversions were the most consistent across the competition.
User Journey Map
The following journey map shows an interviewee's thoughts while going through a main competitor's ad managing software. The user does not appear to go through major negative experiences, aside from the very beginning. The journey seems to be indicative of a neutral-to-positive overall experience.
User Research
Method: semi-structured interviews
Users interviewed: 6
Interview Insights
All users voiced a preference for desktop over mobile for two main reasons: 1.) they mostly work at a desktop computer (at work, in their office) and 2.) they prefer a bigger screen for complex data.
Platform-wise, almost all users prefer Facebook Ads, with only one choosing Google AdSense as their go-to.
Around 50% of users had the autonomy to create ads on their own, the other half did so collaboratively.
Digital marketing specialists were by and large not in charge of the ad budgets for their campaigns.
Most important metrics (in order of importance): click-through rates (CTRs), conversions, impressions.
Major frustrations regarding ad managing software were: 1.) complex/confusing language and 2.) lack of customization/personalization features.
User testing
The creation of user personas allowed the team to hypothesize and draft preliminary design solutions with the goal of solving user pain points or frustrations. Along with user journeys and empathy mapping, this paved the way for digitizing sketches into wireframes, which were used for the first round of usability testing.
User feedback
Confusion over 'Maximize' button ("What is it? Does it need to be there?")
Budget option needs a broader description than 'Daily', as some ad campaigns run for unique durations
'Traffic' is usually seen by marketers as a metric rather than an objective
'Promote my product' seems more like a goal than an ad format
Marketers want to be able to see what an ad is going to look like before launching
User flows
The following flow is meant to illustrate what a user goes through navigating the GoFind ads manager, from creating a campaign and corresponding ads, all the way through checkout.
Sitemap
Final Revisions
