Matt zamudio
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As the first Senior UX Writer at Podium (under the Director of Content), I wore lots of hats and worked on lots of different projects. Here, I'll focus on some of the ones that had the most impact.
One of the primary challenges at Podium was getting local business owners to understand exactly what Podium could do for them. This, of course, is a content-first challenge.
In the following onboarding flow, we aimed to:
1) Gather the requisite information to provide a great UX
2) Tell the story how Podium helps "your" business grow
3) Highlight the ROI of using Podium should you chose to convert to a paid plan
Take a peek.
Sometimes, it's the little things. Through user research, we found that when users took at least 10 actions within 14 days, they were likely to see value and stick around.
One of the most essential of those actions was sending a message from the Podium Inbox, since one of Podium's central features is simplifying communication between local businesses and customers.
Working like two peas in a pod with my designer for this project, we created a breif "test message" flow to give the user an "a-ha" moment: "Oh, I see. I send a message, and my customer receives it as a text."
This flow increased Inbox activation by ~80%, which lead to more 10in14d (10 actions, 14 days) activation down the line.
We found that after users completed sign up and sent their first message, they often wondered, "What now?"
It's a good question, since Podium offers a slew of business building features like requesting reviews, uploading your customer list, setting up text-to-pay payments, adding a chat tool to your website, creating a text campaign, and more.
To remedy this, I worked with my design team to add a Quick Start panel that included "Up Next" tasks, educational "Tips & Tricks", and badges.
What's more, we built a Homepage to give users a checklist of acvitivies (not tasks!) to help set themselves up for success.
When I joined Podium, the product was a bit of a mess. Working with designers, we quickly cleaned up the most important user journeys while, at the same time, building new ones.
But a glaring problem persisted: the inconsistency of each product area's design. For example, the UI of the Payments page looked dramatically different from the Reviews page which looked dramatically different from the Campaigns page.
I raised this primarily infromation architecture (IA) and progressive disclosure issue and sparked a platform-wide initiative with a band of designers. We jokingly called ourselves, The Consistency Squad.
Over the course of a few months -- and this work was ongoing when I left -- we designed an FTUX pattern. The goal was to make the most important first action immediately clear when a user landed in a given product area for the first time.
I relied heavily on the concept of progressive disclosure while designing these experiences. At first, all signs point to that first action. Once complete, the UI blossoms somewhat, like a flower. This continues until the user is a pro at navigating the space.
Payments was the first product I worked on after joining Podium. It was a new offering in dire need of content help. My experience working on Google Ads -- which involved payments -- came in handy.
Working with designers, I helped shape the payment request (ask for a payment) & charge (charge a card) flow, a process that relied heavily on story. Stories always have a start, a middle, and an end. I like to identify those sections when designing a user journey.
For this flow, a healthy amount of information was needed from the user. To make the process feel less cumbersom, I worked with designers to develop a simpler information architecture. I also aimed for short, punchy, and meaningful terminology.
When it comes to serious matters like money, cuteness in design or language is inappropriate. Following the mantra that "the best designs are those you hardly notice," I didn't want the user to think about anything besides requesting money and charging cards.
I worked with the mobile team to release the Podium mobile app for iOS and Android.
Here are some fun screens I wrote for the app store listing.
My work as the first "in the weeds" UX writer at Podium served to completely overhaul the product for the better, which helped local business owners win in a market increasingly dominated by big business.
My early impact was simply being the design counterpart designers needed but didn't have. Together, we created products and flows that transcended the visual and entered the personal, so that Podium might reach out to the user like a close friend.
My work launched a variety of UX improvements and net new offerings, including the Payment functionality (request text-to-pay amounts), the Contacts product area (built-in CRM), the mobile app, and everything Growth related, especially onboarding flows, platform-wide activation, and the free trial experience.
And everything I did was in the name of the user.
I like to think as UXers as guardians of the user for two reasons. 1) it's true and 2) it sounds cool.
While business concerns are of course important, the job of the UXer is mostly to check every product design decision, making sure the user's wants and needs are coming first.
When that's true, everyone wins.
This was the case at Podium, where over 100,000+ local businesses are now using the features we built to grow like never before.
