Estimates

Timeline: Apr 2022 - Dec 2022
Team: 1 product manager, 3 engineers

My Role

Product Designer. Led user research, user interviews, wire-framing, prototyping, designs



 

Overview

What is Podium?

Podium is a user-friendly software that offers tools for local businesses to improve their online reputation, manage customer relationships, and collect payments to increase growth.

Communicate with customers through text

  • Manage customer relationships and online reputation

  • Collect payments via text-to-pay

About this project

This project sought to create an entirely new in-app process to create an estimate.

  • I was in charge on discovering and designing how Podium could make the process of creating estimates easier and faster.

  • We discovered Podium merchants create estimates for customers on prospective projects. Doing so dramatically increases the trust and the project actually going through.

 

Problem

Create an estimates feature that is simple and seamlessly integrates with Podium’s already-existing messaging flow and payment products.

 

User Research

We know that many merchants on Podium create estimates on a daily basis — and is an essential part of their business. But we didn’t know to what extent.

I interviewed 8 Podium customers to learn about their current process for estimating and any pain points that they encounter.

We also sent out an email survey, got back results.

 

Discovery

We learned that estimates are an essential part for many businesses on Podium, particularly for service-based merchants.

From our interviews and survey we were able to learn the following information:

  • Merchants send out estimates daily, ranging from 2-15+ a day.

  • Currently, merchants use a combination of third-party estimation software or even just pen and paper. This makes it difficult to track.

  • The most painful parts of the estimating process is creating the estimate, and managing the estimate afterwards.

 

Ideation

With this information, we were able to prioritize features for development. Knowing what must be included v.s. what is more optional was crucial to support the development process.

  • Create user flows and journey maps

  • Brainstorm seamless points of entry. Where would a merchant be able to create an estimate?

 

For the “Earliest testable product” we included the following features.

  • Create an estimate

    • Price, item descriptions, estimate descriptions

  • Customer POV of estimate

    • Opening the estimate from their text

    • Approving the estimate

Features

 
 

Results

  • Generated $12k of estimates within 2 weeks of launch

  • Rave reviews from our beta customers

    • “We’ve been waiting for this for a long time!”

    • “This is very helpful for our process. Much smoother instead of having to go back and forth.

  • CEO approval and raving. He even used it personally and sent compliments towards our team.

 

Continue iterating and adding more features by

  • Checking in with beta merchants.

  • Observing how they are using the estimate feature, noting any confusion or rage clicks.

  • Get more beta merchants to sign up (more interviews)

Going Forward