Upgraded a “Specialist service” platform to a “Coach service” one

I joined the project when the team was upgrading the platform for Specialists. It was developed according to the Mobile-first design strategy.

I received several tasks:

• Create a logo and update the interface design. To save costs, some elements of the old design had to be reused. Namely colors, fonts, and a few graphic elements.
• Design a landing page.
• Adapt the profile from a generic service provider to Coach.
• Upgrade a few other, selected pages on the platform.

Logo and brand identity

At that stage, the team did not have a new name approved. I joined the brainstorming and specified the naming requirements. It was a great opportunity to get to know the team and accumulate the information I needed to design a new logo and brand identity. After we approved the new name, I was ready to start working on a logo and brand identity right away.

Landing page

For my next task, I relied on my experience. I knew the project had two diverse audiences — Coaches and their clients. And one needs to communicate with them separately because they have different goals. The team approved my argumentative proposal to have two individual landing pages.

Coaches

We started with the landing page for Coaches because the team had three Erickson International Certificated Coaches, using different approaches to Coaching and located in different countries. We conducted in-depth interviews with them to find out more about their profession, goals, priorities, and motives. At the same time, I performed a comparative analysis of competitors and related platforms. Based on the collected data, we designed the first draft of the landing page and tested it with the Coach audience. It was a significant improvement that pleased all team members.

Clients

The first draft of the landing page for clients we based on the vision of our coaches. But during testing, we realized the achievements or advantages valued in the professional community are not received equally well by users. And the people who never worked with a Coach don’t understand the benefits.

We made several attempts, achieving an acceptable intermediate result in the end. Everyone understood that the landing pages would have to change after testing with real-world audiences.

Coach profile

My next task was adapting the service provider profile from an old platform to a new Coach profile. For this, I used the problem interview method.

• I structured the data collected from the Coaches according to the following sets: personal, professional, and emotional. This structure simplified analyzing the data.
• I generated a range of diverse interactions with Coaches and with different Coach approaches. They ranged from: “I have never worked with a Coach” to “I’m often using Coach support”. The project team helped me recruit a group of respondents.
• I assembled separate cards with all the collected Coach data in an online team collaboration board. Then I developed criteria for the respondent tasks and divided all cards into three groups deciding on how helpful they were in hiring a Coach: it is important to know about a Coach, I am curious about a Coach, I don’t need to know about a Coach at all.

After decoding and analyzing the data, a new Coach profile was ready. We found out that most of the professional qualities of the Coach prized in the Coaching community have little influence on the user’s decision to buy a session. People were more interested in personal or emotional data.

It became apparent that building a connection between the Coach and his potential clients based only on formal data is impossible. First of all, they should develop trust between them.

After discussing this within a team, the Coach profile received new features: webinars, marathons, and price packages that did not exist in the old version of the platform. When all team members were satisfied, I finalized the current profile updates and turned to the next step of redesigning the other pages on the platform.

Other platform pages

Based on the previous research we updated the web pages, infographics, Coach feeds, and relevant approaches. But the customer workflow remained unchanged from the old platform.

Testing

During the pilot version testing, we realized that the customer journey became overcomplicated and didn’t work. The clients had difficulties finding a Coach and placing an order. The chances of attracting a community in this way were slim.

Result

Based on the learnings above, the team decided to reevaluate the current business model and change the strategy. They concentrated on finding new ways of expanding the project. The current version was put on hold.