Horizon

Problem

National brands with hundreds of stores often struggle to access clear, top-level SEO insights and trends, which hampers their marketing efforts. Recognizing this challenge, the company identified an opportunity to capitalise on it to secure more enterprise-scale deals. By simplifying and enhancing SEO data through visualisation, these brands can be empowered to make smarter decisions and gain a competitive edge.

Process

Understanding the problem

Brands with hundreds of stores struggle to see the big picture in SEO, making it difficult to demonstrate impact and ROI within the business and to identify where to focus their efforts. Listening to sales calls it was clear this created a barrier for the sales team trying to sell additional services when the customer can’t easily see the impact.

One Day Design Sprint

A one-day design international sprint with the sales, customer success, development, and design teams was faciliated to understand the problem and brainstorm solutions.

The morning focused on identifying three main challenges from commercial and technical perspectives. In the afternoon, ideas were explored through iterative sketching. Key takeaways included a segmented country visual and a scoreboard table.

Influencing Stakeholders With Maps

In the workshop, many participants drew a map of the US to visualize data. However, using a realistic visual has its drawbacks. For instance, densely populated areas like the Northeast can make it difficult to quickly grasp performance insights. The challenge was to present information in a way that allows people to understand insights at a glance while keeping the geography recognizable. Visualising this helped senior stakeholders understand why traditional maps were not fit for purpose.

Defining The MVP

After developing an initial concept, the Product Manager outlined the data needed for the MVP. The focus was on rankings data and identifying the top competitors for each store location.

Rapid Prototyping With The Design System

Using the design system allowed for rapid design exploration and prototyping. However, incorporating dark mode introduced a minimalist feel while still retaining brand colours. A key design challenge was balancing the need to summarize data at a high level with the ability to view detailed information.

Beta Testing

Collaborating with a user researcher, several selected customers were granted beta access to the feature for testing. After a month, each customer participated in a dedicated one-on-one session to provide feedback on their experience with Horizon. Key insights included the need for a state view to access more detailed information and the addition of data sources, such as review insights.

Evolving the Design

The latest design integrates three data sources, providing large national brands with a comprehensive overview of their SEO performance and other crucial metrics, including reputation and insights from Google Business Profiles. The large tabs at the top make users feel like they’re in the same place rather than having to flick between pages like a standard report. During this time, the platform also started to introduce the new green branding.

Outcome

Since the launch, the sales team has successfully closed a number of larger subscription deals, including 6-figure values. The company was also able to generate a significant number of qualified leads at trade shows by showcasing the product. This has enabled them to upsell other services offered by the company.