creating a community for franchisees with tools + info
an update to a portal for the local dealers of a national carpet brand with a strategy for more engagement
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Project + Client: Redesign Franchisee Portal for National Flooring Company
Team: Design Director/Visual Designer, UX Designer, Motion Designer
Duration: 1 month
Role: Lead UX Designer
The local dealer portal for Shaw Flooring was filled with things the company wanted the franchisees to see and know, but it read a lot more like an advertisement than a source of real information.
As small business owners, the audience has a lot of hats to wear and limited time. So, we started by asking a few key questions:
- What do you value most about the network of dealers?
- What information or resources help the most in accomplishing your business goals?
The answer was very simple. First, the dealers needed a way to learn what their peers were doing and what was working. Second, they wanted a way to build relationships with people they met at the annual meetings either by networking, sharing ideas, encouraging each other’s efforts, or even just staying in touch with the peers they clicked with.
Shaw had just set a very ambitious goal for their dealers around overall revenue called the Commit Campaign. The company wanted to set a high bar and elevate the standards for membership in the group. So they knew that the value they provided to the dealer network would have to be elevated also.
As the UX Team, I started with an assessment of the existing tool. It was busy and a little dated looking. It had a LOT of information, but it was overwhelming to find things. Finally, it didn’t provide much information about social connections amoungst the dealers other than a static directory.
What we created + why
In the stakeholder conversations, there was a desire to create an accountability-driven, goal-driven environment. This was the most challenging because the aim was to increase engagement on the part of the dealers, but just telling them to do it wasn’t really the right way. So we looked at a range of things that would present Shaw as modeling their side of it. In the end, we landed on including a pair of graphs you can see in the image (above right on desktop) showing individual Member Points which can be used for discounts and benefits and progress on the Commit Campaign for individual companies and the whole network.
We updated the look and feel to match the sleek new Home Page design that our team had done earlier that same year.
Created a visual design for the cards in the dashboard view that has an immediate differentiation between data, calendars, learning content, and engaging dealer profiles.
Chat functionality was added to the platform so dealers could message each other while looking at information.
Shaw was excited to introduce this product at their dealer conference in 2019 with the lovely sizzle reel you see below. This was created by the very talented motion graphics designer Liz Sayre. It was met with a lot of enthusiasm from the dealer network with a few people commenting that they really felt supported in this next stage of growth.