Invite & import favourite influencers

As part of improving and making Brandnew platform more reliable, we continuously gathered feedback from users on their usage of the product, and found out; agencies have a long list of influencers that they work with saved on an excel sheet, and they wanted to have the influencers on the platform, as it’s easier to operate and see the social network data, since the data is gathered and updated on a regular basis across all social networks.

As a result, the import tool was found to help agencies with creating influencer profiles and inviting them to have an account on Brandnew.

01. Process

Two research methods has been applied, by applying qualitative and quantitative research.

I have started with interviewing users to understand their needs when it comes to working with influencers, as mentioned before, users had a long list of influencers saved in an excel sheet, I looked at the excel files to better understand how I can help them in having the influencer profiles on Brandnew. Also, I have done a survey to investigate how many users have issues with having their influencers on the platform.

Research

Prepared research plan to identify users needs, through running interviews and surveys.

Analysis

Analysed and defined the problems and looked at the excel files to identify requirements.

Ideation

Sketched several design solutions for the flow of importing influencers using CSV files.

02. Analysis

Analysed the gather information from the interviews and from the data sources of mixpanel and hotjar. 

I have looked at our current solution of onboarding influencers through sending  a link, which can be sent to them to register. The findings are the following:

  • The user can invite influencers only by sending them a link to the login page so they can register for an account.
  • The invitation is not personalized, as the user has to copy the link and send out an email to the influencers they have.
  • Influencers are fine with creating an account, but they don’t want to spend time filling profile and connecting their social media accounts
  • Agencies have the permission to create and manage the accounts on behalf of the influencers.
  • Agencies have lots of influencers stored in an excel sheet, which makes it hard for them to onboard one by one.

03. Ideation

Ideation was aiming towards automating the process, to make it effortless for both agencies and influencers. 

Users need an easier way to see the influencers that they have on excel sheets and be able to find them on the platform:
  • Provide an option to invite more than one influencer at once with personalised message through the UI.
  • Provide the user with an option to import influencers from a CSV file automatically into the platform.
I’ve decided to go with the CSV import option while also including personalised emails after a successful import, as it helps the users in importing in bulk in a much faster way, which consists of adding a new import option, and uploading CSV file following a template.

04. How it works

  • The user can download the template (Excel for windows, and Numbers for Mac users), and fill it with all data related to influencers to be imported.
  • After filling the template, the user can export the file to CSV and import it into the platform.
  • The platform will automatically create accounts for influencers.
  • The platform automatically sends personalized messages to influencers informing them of the import.
  • To make sure that the user has the permission from the influencer, the email includes information of creating personalized password and the option to delete the account.

04. Prototype & Testing

Tested the feature after it’s initial prototype on staging environment.

After testing the prototype, I found a couple of errors related to the CSV when its empty or there are missing details, the user will not be able to import the file, so to communicate these errors, I worked on adding a message showing the error when it occurs.

05. Iteration

Second iteration was prepared after the findings from the testing.

An additional use cases has been covered, when there is an error in one of the fields but the others are correct, then the user can continue importing the correct ones anyway. Also, if the list contained influencers that have a Brandnew account already, then they will be added to the group without showing any error of already exist.

06. Metrics

Success metrics were identified for the feature, to keep a close eye on the feature usage and plan future iterations.

Several events were set to track the usage of the feature and the events are set to help in measuring the growth, happiness and engagement of the feature and to plan future iterations, some of the events:

  • The funnel of the CSV import, from upload until completing the import
  • How many times the CSV has been completed without failures
  • How many times the CSV uploaded with failures
  • Type of errors during the import
  • How many times the user clicked on continue anyway

The growth of the feature usage within three months bypassed the onboard feature that was provided before the CSV import. Also, in the first 3 months, 1371 influencers were newly imported using the feature.

Difference between Onboarding feature and CSV import from the release date.