Devias - Abigail Alter's Portfolio

Bizzly UX Projects

Overview

Bizzly, Inc. went through many different stages in its development as a company. Prior to officially establishing the company, the first idea for the business model was to create a review platform as an alternative to Yelp, with a focus on actually helping the businesses (mainly food and beverage establishments). From the beginning, the team was actively engaged with members of the local community. We were meeting with business owners to conduct semi-structured interviews in order to gather data about opportunities in the market. The vast majority of these users (business owners) expressed strong negativity toward Yelp - in most cases, it brought them more harm and headache than good. So we went with this idea at first and as we kept gathering data, talking to the community, we discovered another opportunity. It became apparent that a lot of the small, local businesses that we were connecting with were struggling. This was also happening during the COVID-19 pandemic, when we all saw so many of our favorite businesses around the country have to close from lack of business. It donned on us that perhaps there was a way to connect these small, local businesses with their supporters online so that users would still be able safely patronize their favorite places, and the businesses would unlock recurring revenue to help them survive slow periods. This idea formed into a B2C SaaS startup that we succinctly described as "Patreon for small businesses." This was the operating business model for Bizzly when we officially incorporated, received our first round of funding, and got accepted into the Launch Accelerator Program. Several months later, we discovered another opportunity in the market from conducting more in-depth interviews with our partner businesses. Our partners wanted a platform in order to manage their memberships and connect with their audience - something in between Facebook groups, Reddit, Slack, and Discord. After thoroughly researching existing products in this space and gathering user data from businesses, we expanded our business model to include a "White Label Community Engagement Platform," as we called it, which businesses could utilize for membership management whether their memberships were through Bizzly or elsewhere.

Preliminary Research

Prior to developing the product, we conducted user research to evaluate the demand for this type of product in the market. We created an extensive survey using Typeform and received 70 responses. I analyzed all of those responses using Excel and uncovered some striking patterns. Over 70% of our sample size stated that they would use a service like Bizzly and there was overwhelming support for small businesses over corporations at the heart of the users' motivations.

This graphic was built using Venngage software and used in our presentation of the Bizzly business model to potential investors while we were enrolled in the Launch Accelerator program (la24).

Membership Deals

Below are the membership deals I designed for 7 different small businesses in Huntsville, AL. The website was designed using Shopify, with various integrations. Designing these membership tier pages required a little bit of HTML coding.

Membership offerings through Bizzly for Phat Sammy's, a restaurant/tiki bar in Huntsville, AL.

Membership offerings through Bizzly for Northside Coffee, a coffee shop/coffee bean wholesaler in Huntsville, AL.

Membership offerings through Bizzly for Hops N Guac, a restaurant/bar in Huntsville, AL.

Membership offerings through Bizzly for the Brewer's Cooperative, a brewery in Huntsville, AL.

Membership offerings through Bizzly for BeeZr, a small business collective in Huntsville, AL.

Membership offerings through Bizzly for Chandler's Ford, a brewery in Huntsville, AL.

Membership offerings through Bizzly for Fusion BBQ, a restaurant in Huntsville, AL.

Sitemap

The sitemap I made for the Bizzly Memberships website using flowmapp.com, to better understand the relationship between pages and look at the overall navigation from a birds-eye viewpoint.

In-Store Promotional Material

The image to the right is the coaster I designed to place in partner businesses to increase user engagement. We determined that in-store promotional material was crucial to reach potential customers. Once learning about the benefits of signing up with Bizzly, users would be compelled to sign up because they would have access to benefits they could use right then and there. Restaurants/ bars loved this idea because it encouraged loyalty, and because they are always looking for coasters to use anyways because they go through them so quickly. Customers are also receptive to coasters because they also need to use them, there often isn't much else to read/ look at on the table, and it is non-invasive marketing with an eye-catching design.

Infographic Poster

The image to the left is a poster I designed in collaboration with one of the businesses that Bizzly partnered with, called Phat Sammy's. The goal was to design a poster that is easy to look at and contains all of the relevant information that the user needed to know.

This poster was displayed at a Bizzly x Phat Sammy's launch party and successfully engaged with many users to boost sales. We were able to track user engagement via including a unique QR code on the poster so we could measure how many people visited our website from that poster.

User Journey

Below is an infographic I made to map out the steps involved in a user signing up for a membership with Bizzly using their mobile device. This graphic was helpful for the team to understand each action required by the user in order to successfully use our product and to see whether there were any unnecessary steps or room for improvement in the customer journey. This graphic was also designed to serve as a guide for confused users on the website to reference.

This is a customer journey map I built in Adobe XD to both illuminate the steps required of our users to achieve their goals with our product and to use for the FAQ section on our website to provide support to any users who got lost or confused on the site.

Bizzly Community Tool Platform

Word Cloud of Competitor Analysis Review Research

In order to gain insight into the target users for Bizzly's B2B SaaS Community Tool, I conducted an extensive competitor analysis. I reviewed thousands of user reviews of 62 different competitors in the SaaS community tool space from many different platforms.

Analyzing all of those user reviews and comparing the data revealed several stunning patterns in common complaints, likes, and gaps in the market.

I made several word clouds of the data to share with my team, including the executives, so that they could better visualize the data and recommended several different solutions that would make our product stand out from the crowd and delight users and investors alike.

Agile Workplace

Below are two snapshots of the Bizzly internal communication about ongoing projects utilizing Jira software. For the development of our community tool, we created user stories on Jira, based on the user research analysis, and divided the tasks up among the team, assigning time allotments per item. We had daily standup meetings to discuss our progress and any road blocks to ensure a smooth design sprint.

The first draft of the design for Bizzly's pivot to a community-building software (B2B SaaS) interface. The objective was to create a platform for community managers to utilize that was somewhere in between Slack and Discord. I designed this UI using Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and XD.