Erndo integrates customer acquisition, retention, intelligence, and influence into a seamless loop, enabling small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) to automatically micro-target and reward customers for their valuable activity.
I established and implemented a design strategy for this project with key activities and work products to inform subsequent design decisions. Overlap between each design activity in the process was a natural occurrence as result of working in parallel and as soon as output information was available from a proceeding activity.
Conducted an analysis of new business creation and found the the rate of small business creation has fallen by 1/3 in the last decade and by 1/2since the 1970s. The last decade was in fact the first time in US history in which the rate of business deaths outpaced the rate of business creation.
To better guide our design and enable everyone on the team to empathize with our users, I further synthesized the interview results and came up with the following personas representative of business owners.
Conducting a competitive review of the landscape is revealed the diverse approaches companies have with loyalty programs, from couponing and review sites that offer small business owners and customers similar service offerings.
I focused the competitive research by analyzing 3 platforms that had the features most similar and desirable for Erndo's target demographic's use cases. Insight from users of those platforms also were captured in the analysis.
After designing my initial concept, I also created a product feature map to guide the development of the business and customer app, how the subcomponents integrate, and to align with marketing efforts.
The loyalty platform released with positive feedback from early business adopters as well as customers.
Some key takeaways from this project are:
User testing also means validating requirements. Even before design, validating requirements early ensures a more focused set for design activities.
