GeoLink Asynchronous Avails

Introduction

GeoLink is InMarket’s self-service marketing DSP platform. We got user complaints over the long wait time it took to get avails back for campaign setup, and it was so bad that one big client threatened to leave us if we didn’t fix it within the next 3 months.

The effort started with research, and ended up with a feature release “asynchronous avails” that reduced the average campaign setup time from 49 mins to 16 mins, retained extra $6.7M client spend, and helped the product to win "Product of the Year" at Business Intelligence Group's 2022 Sales and Marketing Technology Awards!

Duration

3 Weeks (2021)

Client

In-house (InMarket GeoLink Team)

Team

Lead Product Designer (Myself), Product Manager, Lead Engineer, Sales Director, Account Managers

My Role

User Interview, Persona, Survey, Ideation, Concept Testing, User Flow, Prototyping

0. Intro 1. Overview 2. Discover 3. Define 4. Develop & Deliver 5. Reflections

1. Overview

Project Brief

👤

User

GeoLink clients who work as Ad Ops and set up campaigns regularly

😵‍💫

Problem

The mandatory wait for avails during campaign setup is too long, and renders campaign setup inefficient.

💡

Solution

Design a solution to reduce the mandatory wait time for the avails during campaign setup, so it’s much more efficient to the users.

🎉

Impact

The solution reduced average campaign setup time from 49 mins to 16 mins, and helped GeoLink to win 2022 "Product of the Year".

Final Solution Demo

Run Avails in Background

The users can skip getting stuck on the page when waiting for avails during the campaign setup.

Try Figma Prototype

Email Notification

The users would get email notifications when their avails are ready, and they can click the links to view/reconfigure the campaigns.

Process

0. Intro 1. Overview 2. Discover 3. Define 4. Develop & Deliver 5. Reflections

2. Discover

Problem & User

Rising Issue

Avails are the aggregate number of ad impressions a site has available for ads, and are important for setting up campaigns. GeoLink avails took a long time to process, and the users had to wait for the avails to return before they could move forward. Every user complained about it, and it was the single largest painpoint for GeoLink.

I met with the PM and came to the initial understanding:

😵‍💫 Problem

GeoLink avails takes too long to process when users set up campaigns. How long exactly? Why?

👤 User

GeoLink clients who set up campaigns. Could it be more specific?

Stakeholder Interview

Key Findings

The long wait to get avails was the single biggest complaint from every client.
The long wait to get avails was also a huge problem for sales team, because they cannot demo full campaign setup process in real time.
Getting avails was a mandatory step in campaign setup, and took users average 33 mins for the wait!!!
The engineers were improving the backend to get avails sooner with about 10-20% less wait time, but still too long for the users.

Key Decision

Speed or perfect process?

Speed!

There was ongoing engineering effort to reduce the wait time for avails, and it did improve slowly.

However, this time is different - a big client threatened to leave us if we didn’t fix it within the upcoming months, and it would be a big hit to our revenue. So I met with the PM and established that we should put speed as the top priority for the project even if the process could become “dirty”.

User Interview

Key Findings

The users were the GeoLink clients, mostly Ad Ops, they set up campaigns.
Getting avails was one of the unskippable steps in campaign setup.
The users could not do anything but wait while the avails was being calculated, which took 20-40 mins typically, very inefficient!!!
The avails was important to the users, they wanted to review it, but they also wanted to perform tasks while waiting for avails.

0. Intro 1. Overview 2. Discover 3. Define 4. Develop & Deliver 5. Reflections

3. Define

Redefined Problem & User

😵‍💫 Redefined Problem

The mandatory wait for avails during campaign setup is too long, and renders campaign setup inefficient.

👤 Redefined User

GeoLink clients who work as Ad Ops and set up campaigns regularly

Persona - Ad Ops

Talia Anderson

Ad Ops

Age: 29

Status: Single

Location: Lancaster, PA

Work Experience: 6 Years

Bio

Talia is an Ad Ops working for a small-mid size advertising agency (50-200 employees) in Lancaster, PA. She enjoys the world of marketing, and is absolutely an expert in Hands On Keyboard media buying. She implements strategies, sets up campaigns, monitors and optimizes them for good performance, and reports back to the clients regularly. She also makes sure to analyze performance to maximize KPIs and keep updating strategies. She uses various platforms for her work, including GeoLink and some other DSPs.

Needs

She needs optimize ad spend.
She needs to make timely changes
She needs to meet a KPI goal
She needs to customize the workflow

Goals

She wants to achieve more with less time and lower cost.
She wants good performance for her choices of media buying.
She wants to avoid repetition and fatigue.

Frustrations

Too many manual processes
Too many steps in certain tasks
Has multiple logins over various platforms
Has to wait a long time for certain steps

0. Intro 1. Overview 2. Discover 3. Define 4. Develop & Deliver 5. Reflections

4. Develop & Deliver

Design Principles

⏳️

Speed First

The project is time-sensitive, and the team should put design and development speed as the priority.

🛠️

Simple Solution

The solution should celebrate simplicity for the users and minimize the disruption to the user habits.

👀

Visual Consistency

We are delivering the solution to the existing platform, so we should keep consistency with the existing style.

Ideation

🤔

Idea #1

Skip Avails

The users can choose to totally skip avails when setting up campaigns.

🤔

Idea #2

Be Selective

The users can select certain line items that they want to get avails for, and leave the others out of the calculation.

🤔

Idea #3

Asynchronous Avails

The users can continue campaign setup while avails are being calculated in the background.

Then I asked the account managers to bring the ideas in front of the users for concept testing:

Key Decision

Which idea to move forward?

Idea #3 - Asynchronous Avails!

The winning solution was idea #3 - The users can continue campaign setup while avails are being calculated in the background according to the user feedback.

User Flow

Existing Flow

The existing flow would not allow the users to proceed unless the avails are ready and good enough for campaign:

New Flow (Final)

Per the engineer feedback, I cleaned up the flow design into asynchronous avails:

See Discussion with Engineers

Flow Design v1

The flow design would allow the users to proceed with campaign setup with or without avails, and get avails later from the notification emails:

Critic with Engineers

I walked through the flow design v1 with the engineers, and they gave me some awesome suggestions:

Flow Design v2 (Final)

Per the engineer feedback, I cleaned up the flow design:

Prototyping - Platform

Option 1 (Floating Window)

The users can continue campaign setup with a floating window that indicates the status of the avails.

Option 2 (Status at the Bottom)

The users can continue campaign setup with a status in the bottom bar that indicates the status of the avails.

Key Decision

Option 1 or option 2?

Option 2!

I presented the options to the PM, and the PM decided to talk to engineers to understand the effort needed for the implementation.

The engineers came back and decided that option 1 (with floating window) would require much more development than option 2 (with status in the bottom bar). So in order to acheive our limited timeline, we decided to go with option 2 (with status in the bottom bar).