BeenVerified Organizational Toolkit
Redesigning essential user pathways and introducing of new features focused on streamlining user navigation, sorting, saving and surfacing new information.
BeenVerified, a task-driven software platform, enables users to search information about people, property, contact info and vehicles which are available to the customer in the form of ‘reports’. We hypothesized that users were encountering roadblocks when it comes to navigating, sorting, saving and finding new information. We speculated that this often forces them to exit the platform to accomplish their intended tasks, which can be quite interruptive.
By streamlining the experience across non-report functionalities, such as searching, sorting, saving and surfacing new information will reduce user friction, increase product stickiness and a higher retention rate
Understanding the user's journey suing BeenVerified and how they are interacting with and reacting to information is essential to improving it. By conducting user interviews, we sought to gather self-reported data to identify and prioritize optimizations that would most benefit our users.
Interviewing users to learn more
Themes
- Users are missing internal navigation
- Users are asking for a place to curate and save lists of information
- Users are missing updates about information which makes them less likely to return
- Users don’t always understand there are multiple search types
- Non cohesive footers are distracting and disruptive
- Users want a way to make notes on reports for when they return at a later time
To improve navigation, we replaced the tabular, horizontal navigation with a sidebar that aligns more closely with user expectations for similar websites.
The footer was redesigned with a column-based layout, featuring added content such as social media links and a QR code for easy mobile app downloads, providing users with more valuable resources.
We introduced a notification system to keep users regularly informed of relevant updates, searches, and new features. This enhancement was driven by user feedback from interviews, where we discovered that users often missed updates to reports they were monitoring or new feature releases.
A major theme that emerged from user interviews was that users were leaving the platform to use external software for organizing lists, such as for class reunions, sales prospects, or potential leads. They would copy URLs from BeenVerified and paste them into word documents to keep track. To address this, we introduced a list functionality that allows users to organize reports into customizable groupings, keeping them within the platform while better supporting their workflow.
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It was revealed that users often exited BeenVerified to document interesting findings in external applications, such as word documents or email, which proved cumbersome and difficult to manage. To address this, we designed a feature allowing users to add annotations directly to reports. These notes are then consolidated on a dedicated "Notes" page, giving users a clear overview of their annotations and which reports they've documented, streamlining their workflow.
Before rolling out these optimizations to all users, we conducted an A/B test with 5% of BeenVerified's total traffic. In this test, the "A" variation included all the updates described above, while the control group experienced the site as it was previously. This allowed us to measure the impact of the changes and ensure they delivered a meaningful improvement.
Quantifying the results with A/B testing
Increase user retention
Feature usage
Overall interactions
By leveraging user-reported data and optimizing information discovery, management, saving, and search processes, we achieved significant results: a $1.5 million increase in annual revenue, a 26% rise in non-report feature usage, and a 27% boost in overall user interactions.
