From “fetch it yourself” report builder to ready-made actionable insights
Analytics Suite for Marketers
Company: Yext
Role: Product Direction, Concept Development, Design Leadership
Timeline: Dec 2016 - Feb 2017
Yext is a platform that gives brands control over their online presence across 100+ digital services by storing and syndicating their public knowledge such as location information, menus, events, and reviews, out to sites like Google My Business, Yelp, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
Prior to 2017, their Analytics offering consisted of two parts: a report builder and one dashboard to be shared within the account with limited customizability.
1) The report builder, though powerful, was clunky and only used by a few power users who had overcome the steep learning curve. To everyone else, though hundreds of meaningful raw metrics that tell a story about business' performance were available, they were inaccessible. To mention a few, these metrics included: Profile Views, Search Impressions, Clicks to Website, Clicks to Get Directions, Taps to Phone Number, and Facebook Page Visitor Demographics.
2) The dashboard had significant customizability limitations compared to other leading analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Tableau, MixPanel, and Domo. The module sizes and arrangement options maxed out at two. Because there was no functionality to add multiple dashboards, it was impossible to make thematized reports or individual reports to each need. Understandably, adoption for the dashboard was also very low.
Customers' lack of engagement with analytics was not only hurting them--it was hurting Yext. Because they rarely came across data on their digital performance, many had difficulty understanding the value Yext was bringing them over time. This consequently resulted in Account Managers and Customer Success teams frequently explaining the "Yext message" via phone calls or QBRs.
Seeing a clear opportunity to demonstrate the value customers are getting by using Yext, within the platform experience, the Analytics Agile Team was assembled to redefine the overall strategy and product offerings. The team was consisted of UX, Product Management, Business Analysts, Client Services, and Product Marketing.
Through market research, competitive analysis, and user research, we arrived at the following strategy and new Analytics offering:
1
Introduce out-of-box insights that have been verified as of value to customers. Cut out the user step of having to create these reports from scratch on their own.
3
Revamp the Report Builder for power users with visual and functional improvements and feature additions.
2
Sprinkle these insights throughout all product areas, front and center of users' regular activity on the platform. Integrate data consumption as an effortless part of the user journey.
4
Introduce a whole new "Dashboards" page that houses multiple, highly configurable dashboards.
The launch of the new Analytics Suite in 2017 truly shifted the dynamic in client management. Rather than CSMs trying to prove Yext’s value, clients preemptively brought insights they wanted to discuss with their CSMs, unlocking strategic discussions to take place.
Impact was clear — login frequency to the platform multiplied per account (more users brought on to platform), and usage of the entire platform almost doubled per user. Faster and higher renewals, upsells, and new business coming in from brands across industries also followed.
The cherry on top was this serving as the necessary platform infrastructure to steward the rapid innovation of new products such as Yext Search (fka Yext Think) and Yext Pages, whose success could only be unleashed with marketers’ feedback loop of [Launch an experience → Study customer behavior → Iterate with changes].
