Schibsted
Advertising Platform
Role: Head of UX (Global Advertising: 4x Products)
Company: Schibsted Product & Tech, working across all global marketplaces
Project timeline: Aug 2016 – Dec 2017
Team: 5x Product Designers, 2x Researchers, 1x Customer Engagement Specialist
Stakeholder Management | Operating Model | Setting team up for success | Solve business goals | Ad Product Tools
Stakeholder management
Working across 4x global products for Schibsted's Advertising Platform.
Responsible for day-to-day management of the UX team, mentoring, and hiring.
Working with Product & Engineering Leads to create strategic vision, set annual and quarterly OKRs.
Operating model
Each team was on 2-week sprints
Using Agile and JIRA to manage the process: daily standups and kanban, Epics and user stories
UX working closely with Product, Tech and Data-insights (UX Triangle).
(Important to have all three stakeholders in product development discussions)
Setting up the team up for success
Working in a flat structure / foster collaboration across all disciplines
Use of regular design sprints and workshops with product and engineering - all should feel welcome
Foster a culture of openness, and to be able to “say it as it is”
Transparency is key, making sure everyone is onboard - immediate and long-term goals
Constant feedback loop between me (Manager), Product and Engineering
Using JIRA and Quarterly OKRs for clarity and monitoring progress
Research is your biggest tool and weapon
Involve all stakeholders with user-testing, and give regular updates on research results
Foster good debate and brainstorming backed by user research
Inspire and growing the team
Weekly show & tell / design critique sessions, fostering openness
Challenge every design decision - foster good debate
Use of regular training and attending of meet-ups and conferences
Most important - growing the team
Be approachable as a manager, and treating everyone equally
Adapt management style according to the person - we are all different and have different needs
Protect the team
Create learning opportunity with regular internal/external training, attending Conferences or encouraging Meet-Ups
Challenges - or opportunities?
How is success measured
Product releases (quantitative measure)
when acquisition and retention rates grow
when products/features are released knowing well it is what users want and need
when research is at the forefront of product strategy to inform company vision and direction - customer feedback is KEY!
experimentation if part of a company’s DNA
we create products that ‘delight our users’
Process / and as a team (vanity metrics)
when tools like JIRA / Trello help us achieve the goals we set out to achieve - improve on sprint estimation
having good cross-functional team spirit / all are open to collaboration to want to innovate - retrospectives
continuous learning: applied knowledge
How we worked to solve business goals
Drive design innovation to improve product experience and adoption.
Using product lifecycle design-centred methodologies.
Researchers continuously informs Product Strategy
Research & product prioritisation:
discovery
customer surveys, benchmarking, customer feedback with user journey and persona updates
created user panel database of frequent users, who opted in to give feedback on new ideas
product prioritisation
Benefit: increase revenue, customer value and strategic value
Cost: implementation effort, operational costs, and risks
Design phase 1: conceptualisation
multi-discipline workshop wireframe concepts with feedback loops
Design phase 2:
high fidelity design mock-ups
stakeholders review and feedback loop - iterations
prototype creation - Adobe Suite, Sketch, Zeplin, InVision
user testing in local markets
Plan research / select and book user to be interviewed
Pre-pare prototypes and interview script - be adaptable during testing
use external localised research to test in the local language
Use RIVER Research to conduct in FRANCE and NORWAY
Build, QA, test:
hand off high spec designs to front-end (sketch-zeplin),
build and review QA,
launch in stages 5%,10%, 20% …. 100%
Quantitative research:
continuously monitor the performance,
A/B test experiments with small enhancements
”design is NEVER finished - you are always iterating!”
Global Ad Product Set
Self-Serve Ads
This tool allows our sites (newspapers and marketplaces) to offer a new service to small and medium businesses to manage their advertising needs with little effort and with a custom budget.
Audience Segments
A tool for Sales Teams to create bespoke audience targeting segments to better target their ad campaigns’ specific location and demographics area, as well as modify existing segments.
Generate Reports
This tool allows our Sales to quickly produce graphic reports of past and current campaigns to share with clients, as well as segments reports for pre-sales needs.
Inventory Booking
A simple booking platform with real-time data, reporting tools, and better insights to make informed decisions. It allows for forecasting, booking and performance management, plus upload of creatives.
Product deep dive…
Ads: Self Serve Advertising
What is the project about
SSA is a global product enables small to medium businesses, SMBs, to take full advantage of the potential that comes with digital advertising. Working in close cooperation with Leboncoin (France), we launched Self-Serve Advertising – the first advertising product that allows our companies’ clients to create their own ads. SSA is a simple, yet powerful product for these advertisers to create text and display ads in order to target users based on location and interests.
Launch of Beta version, Schibsted news article here.
What problem we trying to solve
Make it easy for SMBs to advertise online
enable sellers to create effective (measurable) and highly targeted advertising campaigns
allowing sellers to have control over costs of the ad campaign.
the tool needs to overcome overly complex solutions that provide unclear results and ambiguous ROI
the product should be simple to use, be customer-centric, and an aid for novice advertisers
How
2-week sprint, with product and feature grooming 2-4 weeks in advance
Regular qualitative research user testing
Created a ‘user test panel’ (people can sign up to be a part of a a panel to give regular product experience feedback)
The customer success manager produced weekly reports on usability
Customer pain points which informed through the ‘Intercom Chat’
(1x question for every 33 visits)Creating clear user stories and customer journey maps (updated regularly)
1x a month onsite in France and Norway
Customer flow map
Customer journey map - Leboncoin, France
Main pain points:
Research: choosing the right tool
expected Sign-up to be fast (SPID)
lack of content once booked first Ad (empty Ads manager)
01. Home value proposition / sign up
Biggest marketplace in Norway
Only pay when they click on your website
Speed: book in 3 easy steps
Accuracy: targeted audience
Efficiency: dashboard management
02. Target my audience
Gender: All
Municipality region: All of Norway
03. Write my Ad
Image upload with zoom and crop ability
Logo upload with size and crop ability
Headline with 21-character limit
Description with 100-characters max
Ad writing TIPs (link)
Ad link: to where will the user go when Ad is clicked (CTA + URL)
Where the AD will appear context
04. Select my budget
AD start time: also take in to account moderation time
Ad stop: select a date / or stop when budget runs out
Set budget: small / medium / large / custom amount
Pay info: when will customer be charged
05. Review my Ad
Section 1: Your Ad Details
Objective of Ad / Category / Targeting: gender and region / Advert external link
Section 2: Review AD and book
“Near look example” of what AD will look like
Budget and “no of clicks you paid for”
When the Ad will appear, and when will the ad be stopped
06. Success, what next…
Rough AD visualisation and it’s content
What happens next?
moderation, clicks and invoicing
07. Ad manager
Research
This is a frequently asked question?
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
This is a frequently asked question?
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
This is a frequently asked question?
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Ads: Vantage Reporting
What is the project about
Vantage is a tool for reporting and monitoring of Ad campaigns by Sales Team (direct campaign, programmatic, and segment reports). They use Vantage on a weekly basis to monitor and track campaigns for their preferred Advertisers, Brands or Buyers, giving them a detailed overview of campaigns, revenue, impressions and other key metrics. Vantage provides easy-to-use-reports that can be presented to customers and are always used in sales and pre-sales meetings. The fact that Vantage users can present a solid report to their customers gives the sales reps a distinct advantage in their market. The reports are simple and easy to read while targeting KPIs that are of interest to both sales reps and customers.
What problem we trying to solve
The sales reps were located across different Schibsted markets in Europe, and used Vantage on a weekly basis to monitor and track campaigns for their preferred Advertisers, Brands or Buyers. There previous experience using other reporting tools had many issues, often using manual forms to coordinate with traffic teams to identify audience segments. The Vantage solution would aim to addressed these issues (user quotes):
“I can’t customise the system to suit mine and my clients needs”
“I’m not able to download, edit and share information with clients as easily as I would like to”
“I cant get instant access to the status of my live campaigns which delays my response time in case of a crisis”
How we did it
UX team researchers conducted interviews (Sales, AdOps, Managers) in Norway, Sweden and France to gather insights into how they produce reports. We were able to extract goals, working processes and pain points to build a 1st MVP using the standard Product Design Methodologies (discover, design, test iterate, launch, test). Over time we introduced additional features giving the users even more data to make informed decisions. Success of the tool can be seen from some users during useability testing:
“Nowadays the reports that Schibsted Sales team shares with us and the clients are so good in terms of the visuals, data and UX that our clients want to see more of such reports”
“Behaviour data! Demographic data! This is fabulous stuff! I can’t wait to take this back to my client!!!!” - Sales manager
“Vantage has evolved SO much, I can’t think of meeting my client without it now” - Sales Manager
“Before we (AdOps) have to make a booking on Rose for a particular campaign, we login to Vantage and check all the previous campaign reports, segments and get informed what is best for booking” - AdOps team
“I am on Vantage religiously every single Monday at least once to check my campaigns” - Sales manager, Norway
“Vantage is much faster than any other tools” - Sales Team, Norway
“Oh my God!!!!! we finally have it, programmatic campaign reports! - Senior Sales manager, Norway
Below are some screens from the Tool that show you what you are able to do for Direct Campaign reports:
• Search for Advertiser
• View list of campaigns for selected advertiser
• View start and end date of campaigns
• View campaign delivery rate
• Impressions / clicks / CTR
• Impression breakdown across different publishers
• Unique users
• Viewability rate of campaigns
• Demographic reach (Powered by 3rd party, currently available only for Norway)
• Download report in PowerPoint format.
Ads: Rose Booking API
What is the project about
Create product (placement) and enable applicable targeting options(Geo, Age, Gender etc)
Add price for the product per delivery type (GTD CPM, GTD vCPM etc)
What problem we trying to solve
Give users the option to book a campaign targeting ‘Share of Voice’ (SoV)
Build better trust with users through improved communication
Improve user interaction experience through an improved Admin area
Better experience for AdOps (traffic), and improve overview for users to keep track of their activity.
Launch in Italy, Spain, Mexico xxxxxxxx
How we did it
Results
