ActiveCampaign Web Personalization

What is Web Personalization?

• Web Pers gives SMBs the ability to create many personalized iterations of a single web experience, without the complexity of managing multiple instances
• Users leverage platform intelligence (gathered from other channels) to segment specific audiences
• When audience members visit users’ site, our embedded code renders personalizations instantaneously
• Rounds out users’ ability to create end-to-end journeys for the full customer lifecycle—beyond the inbox, meeting customers where they are

Adoption woes and hypotheses

• Despite its potential, Web Pers saw underwhelming adoption in its first quarter following launch
• In three months, we served ~40k experiences, representing ~9% of all traffic on personalized sites
• ActiveCampaign’s user base was 140k+ at this time; ~600 had utilized Web Pers
• Data revealed a steep dropoff between the time when users start working with Web Pers, and the act of publishing their first experience
• Q4 2020: Conversations (~80%); Pages (~47%); Web Personalization (2.45%)
• Talking with users, I worked with PM to identify four initial hypotheses for Web Pers’ adoption woes
• Users do not know how to get started
• The product is feature light and lacks platform visibility
• The product suffers from connection issues
• Customers are suffering from analysis paralysis
• We identified five features which we believed would:
• resolve most user hesitancy/confusion
• bring Web Pers closer to feature parity with competitors
• fundamentally improve the utility of the product
• I collaborated with Product and Engineering to conduct a design sprint wherein we:
• Fleshed out iterative designs for the four features
• Gathered validation from users via usability testing sessions
• Completed implementation of two features, with the remaining slated for future implementation

Getting Started Recommendations

Preview Mode

Canvas Device Size Simulator

Element Visibility

Experience Prioritization

Research techniques and collaboration

Regular validation is critical in product design. Throughout the course of feature discovery, I prioritize customer engagement and work with Product to conduct competitive analysis. I believe strongly that:

• individual designers should be close to the research process
• designers should bring their cross-func peers into research whenever possible
• solutions should be shaped by customer feedback loops using passive and active mechanisms

Results and looking ahead

• Focus on new Web Channels feature work has fluctuated since H1 2021
• Much of the discovery done in this push is slated for implementation in H2 2022
• While usage metrics have steadily increased for the Web Pers product line since our focus shift, a direct impact from this work is reflected in Q1 2021 stats. Releasing Experience Prioritization alongside Element Visibility garnered improved customer engagement and retention:
• Organic (non-ad-driven) engagement from active accounts
• Q4 2020 → 6.08%
• Q1 2021 → 7.06%
• Experience publish rate among active Web Pers users
• Q4 2020 → 2.45%
• Q1 2021 → 8.59%
• Notably, these increases did not stem from any increase in product marketing
• When we return to Web Pers, the team will conduct renewed discovery to survey the landscape, reconsider how Web Pers fits into our platform’s positioning, and proceed with some iteration of the earlier features described here.