№ 002 · SOTRENDER · SAAS · B2B · SOCIAL MEDIA

Boosting User Activity with Sotrender’s Social Inbox

Sotrender faced low user engagement, with users accessing the platform only twice a month. I led the development of the Social Inbox to integrate into daily workflows. Through research, interviews, and iterative design, we boosted user engagement and satisfaction.

SaaSB2BSenior UX DesignerProduct Team LeaderSocial Media Analytics

Due to my non-disclosure agreement, I have removed or hidden any confidential information from this case study. The information presented here is based on my own experience and does not represent the views of Sotrender.

Key outcomes
2×/mo → daily
ENGAGEMENT CADENCE
250
USERS SURVEYED
150
RESPONSES ANALYZED
10+5
PRIMARY + SECONDARY INTERVIEWS
Introduction

Overview and Context

About the company

Sotrender is an analytical platform designed to measure the efficiency of social media communication. It also functions as a moderation tool for ads and posts on Facebook and other social media platforms.

What does it do?

  • Provides detailed analytics and reports on social media activities.
  • Automates the moderation of ads and posts.
  • Delivers actionable insights with real-time data to enhance engagement.
Add image — About Sotrender

My Role

As a Senior UX Designer and Product Team Leader at Sotrender, I owned and led the design process of new features and iterations from early-stage feature discovery through usability testing, final delivery, launch, and the full-stage life cycle of improving the product experience.

Planning & Scope Definition
Defined the strategy of Sotrender and contributed to defining operational success metrics, roadmap, and sprint goals.
Design Execution & Validation
Designed and prototyped multiple ideas quickly, staying in touch with customers to validate product directions.
Customer Insights & Ideation
Led user research and usability testing, synthesizing and presenting results. Created a system for validating ideas through A/B testing.
Leading Team Workshops
Led workshops such as experience mapping, creative problem-defining, and problem-solving sessions.
Team Management
Built a design team, recruited and mentored junior designers, ran weekly 1:1s, designed a career path, led retrospectives.
Product Leadership
Directed the product team, maintained alignment, represented product in management meetings, worked on company and team-level OKRs.
Add image — My Role
The task

New Product Direction

The Challenges

As Sotrender became a stable market tool, growth and user engagement plateaued, presenting several challenges:

  • Market saturation: Sotrender stopped growing and engaging users, hindering international expansion.
  • Cyclical usage pattern: Users mainly visited twice a month to generate reports, seeing no reason for more frequent interaction.
  • Lack of engagement: Limited interaction meant users didn’t perceive additional value, complicating increased usage or higher pricing.
  • Ineffective optimizations: Previous efforts to optimize the user funnel, onboarding, and usability didn’t boost engagement and failed to address cyclical usage.

Strategic Approach to Enhancing User Engagement

After identifying the main issues hindering Sotrender’s growth, particularly the cyclical usage pattern, we needed a solution to increase user interaction. Our goal was to integrate Sotrender into the daily workflow of social media managers, strategists, and campaign planners.

1. Understanding User Workflow

  • Survey distribution: We reached out to a select group of frequent users with the help of our customer service team.
  • Targeted outreach: I sent a focused survey to 250 users to understand their monthly activities and how Sotrender could become more integral to their routine.

2. Identifying High-Value Features

  • Prioritizing user needs: We analyzed survey responses to identify the most valued activities and prioritize features for regular use.
  • Feature integration: We identified features that could integrate with our existing analytics and reporting capabilities, enhancing Sotrender’s value proposition.
Add image — The Task / Strategic Direction
Validation of the direction

Defining the New Direction for the Product

User Feedback Collection

  • Targeted outreach: We surveyed 250 frequent users to understand their daily and weekly workflows and identify activities Sotrender’s functionalities could enhance.
  • High response rate: We received 150 responses, providing a robust dataset for analysis.

Analyzing Survey Responses

  • Collaboration: I worked with a product analyst to analyze survey responses, focusing on the most common and problematic cyclical tasks of social media managers.
  • Key findings: The moderation of social media profiles emerged as the most frequent task — a finding that could significantly boost the regular use of Sotrender.

Prioritizing and Key Insights on User Needs

Key criteria for prioritization

  • Existing solutions: Whether the task is currently addressed by other competitive applications and how effectively.
  • User satisfaction: How satisfied users are with their current solutions for these tasks.
  • Technical feasibility: Whether we had the technical capability to provide a solution.
  • User impact: The number of users affected and the potential impact of providing a solution.
Key insights
  • Moderation of social media profiles: Identified as a critical task users perform frequently, where existing solutions were found lacking.
  • Content scheduling and posting: Users needed better tools for scheduling and posting content across multiple platforms.
  • Real-time analytics: Providing real-time insights to help users make data-driven decisions more frequently.
  • User engagement management: Tools for managing interactions and engagement on social media, including responding to comments and messages.
Starting new project

Kick-starting the Social Inbox Project

Kick-off Meeting for Social Media Moderation

I conducted a kick-off workshop with the product team and engineering leaders to initiate the social media inbox project. The meeting was documented and shared with the company to ensure alignment and transparency.

Custom Design Process for Social Media Moderation

After the kick-off workshop, I developed a flexible design process for enhancing social media moderation features. This adaptable process allowed for iteration based on feedback and evolving goals, and was shared with the team.

Building understanding

Primary Research

Defining Research Questions

We started with a kick-off workshop to define our primary research questions and hypotheses, clarifying assumptions about the product problem and user interactions. Key questions included:

  • What are our assumptions about the product problem we want to solve?
  • How could the product be used?
  • How are people solving the problem right now?

These formed our research plan, guided by Tomer Sharon’s Validating Product Ideas.

Add image — Research / Kick-off Workshop

User Interviews

With our research plan set, I conducted 10 user interviews to gain insights into our target users’ daily workflows and challenges. This structured primary research provided a clear understanding of user problems and opportunities, crucial for guiding the next steps in product development.

Synthesizing Insights and Prioritizing Key Findings

Workshop outcomes

  • Response time: Need for faster response times.
  • Notifications: Issues with notification handling.
  • CMS / Documents: Improvement needed in managing documents.
  • History & search: Difficulty in tracking past interactions.

Next steps

  • Summarized findings shared with the team to ensure alignment on priorities.
  • Insights guided secondary research to validate findings and explore solutions.
Secondary research

Detailed Exploration and Competitive Analysis

Targeted Secondary Research

Post-workshop, we focused on key issues in social media content moderation. I conducted five more interviews targeting the identified problems. Results were synthesized into a Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) framework, offering actionable insights for concept development. JTBD was chosen over personas for a dynamic, goal-oriented approach.

Evaluating Competitors

Post-interviews, I conducted a competitive analysis to ensure our solution was innovative and user-centric.

Key insights from competitive analysis

  • Agora Pulse: Integrated inbox and listening features but lacks advanced notification filtering.
  • Napoleon: Comprehensive moderation with chronological filtering but limited messaging app integration.
  • SocialBakers: Strong monitoring and management, advanced tagging and filtering — but only on higher-tier plans.
  • Sprout Social: Excels in analytics and social listening but lacks features for rapid moderation response.

Key aspects for development

  1. Efficient notification filtering: Advanced filtering options for specific notifications.
  2. Seamless integration: Smooth integration with popular messaging apps.
  3. User-centric tagging system: Robust tagging and categorization for effective content management.
Developing the solution

Designing the Solution

Ideation and Initial Sketches

I developed the information architecture, user flows, and sketches during ideation workshops with the product team. Using techniques like Crazy 8 and the “How Might We” (HMW) method, we focused on specific problems identified earlier to ensure solutions aligned with user needs and jobs-to-be-done (JTBD).

Mid-Fidelity Mockups and Prototyping

After several rounds of iteration on the sketches and user flows, I created mid-fidelity mockups and began prototyping. This phase involved refining the visual and interactive aspects of the design while maintaining close collaboration with the product and engineering teams.

Usability testing

Validating Design

Planning and Conducting Usability Tests

Once the primary user scenarios were solidified in mid-fidelity designs and a working prototype was created, I began planning the usability testing phase. The goal was to gather user feedback on the proposed MVP solution. I prepared detailed test scenarios and a structured plan for conducting usability tests, creating tasks to simulate real-world use of the new social media moderation feature.

Analyzing Feedback and Key Insights

After usability tests, I synthesized feedback to identify key insights for refining the design. I documented common issues and suggestions from participants and shared these findings with the product and engineering teams to prioritize changes.

INSIGHT 01
Quick access to comment management
Users need immediate access to options for managing comments and enhancing efficiency.
INSIGHT 02
Improved tag filtering
Clear and prominent tag filtering, especially for Messenger, is crucial for better organization.
INSIGHT 03
Unified notification inbox
A single notification inbox simplifies management.
INSIGHT 04
Efficient archiving system
Users want a reliable archive system to store and retrieve past interactions.
INSIGHT 05
Streamlined response workflow
Speed and ease of responding to new content are vital for maintaining user engagement and satisfaction.

Additional suggestions included customizable response templates, an intuitive interface, and seamless integration with existing tools — providing clear direction for refining the MVP.

Add image — Usability Testing
Final design & product analytics

Hi-Fi, KPIs, and MVP Rollout

High-Fidelity Designs and the Design System

Add image — Mid-Fidelity Designs / Prototyping

After incorporating engineering feedback, I started high-fidelity designs, creating new components for the Social Inbox using our Design System. I iterated on designs based on internal feedback, aiming to develop a robust MVP for testing and further iteration.

Product Analytics and KPI Monitoring

In parallel, I collaborated with our Product Analyst to define KPIs for the Social Inbox feature. We identified key metrics and established a measurement plan. We planned the MVP release for alpha users to gather feedback and data before a full rollout.

Rolling Out the MVP of Social Inbox

For the MVP rollout, we leveraged the power of Mixpanel for analytics. This tool allowed us to monitor usage, identify issues, and make data-driven decisions. Key feedback from alpha users led to enhancements, ensuring a refined and successful deployment for all users.

Add image — Final Hi-Fi Designs / Social Inbox
Results

Outcomes and Learnings

Addressing Initial Challenges

After a few iterations, the Social Inbox effectively tackled issues of market saturation, cyclical usage patterns, and lack of engagement by integrating into users’ daily workflows. This ensured consistent value for social media managers beyond bi-monthly report generation.

Market saturation
Enhanced product differentiation with new features.
Lack of engagement
Provided additional value that justified increased platform usage.
Cyclical usage pattern
Increased daily user engagement through regular content moderation.

User Engagement and Feedback

Feedback from users was overwhelmingly positive. Appreciation for enhanced moderation capabilities exceeded basic options on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, driving higher engagement levels.

Reflections: Key Learnings and Insights

  • Transparent communication: Better internal alignment was needed, especially between marketing and other departments.
  • Marketing team engagement: The marketing team needed to be more active in promoting the feature.
  • Addressing customer needs: The product effectively met target audience demands and reinforced a customer-centric approach.
  • Alignment and knowledge sharing: Highlighted the need for better alignment and knowledge sharing within the team, involving all customer touchpoints.
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