Blog Analytics
Company
Wix
Role
Product Designer working with PM, BA, developers, and UX writer
Industry
SaaS
Date
December 2022 - WIP
Challenge
Before diving deeper into a problem and solution, I would like to explain what was my role in this project. I was a part of analytics product team along with designer lead, PM and BA.
My personal challenge was to combine 2 projects with a different audience simultaneously and to organise my process.
Problem
Blog is one of the most popular products among Wix users. But how we can help them to be even more successful?
1.
Wix already has reports and data which could be helpful for users, but for analyzing blog performance users need to visit different reports.
2.
There is no analytics on blog pages where users manage a business.
Data insights
More than 442K users visited Blog Overview page in October 2022. Only 4% of them found and clicked on currently hidden "All blog reports" button.
We also know that 15%(119K) of ready blogs had 50+ post views in October 22. 12K(73%) users that clicked to see Analytics from Post Overview - did not reach their destination.
A lot of users use categories and tags but we do not have them in our data model.
Research
To begin the project, we did a competitor's research to understand industry standards and points where we can have strengths. We gathered together analytics screens from such products as JetPack, Momenty, Blogger, and Medium, Google Analytics and analyzed them.
Key Findings
Views, Visitors, Subscribers, and Engagement are the most important metrics for blog success
Some of products show total numbers on the same place as filtered by date
Average reading time could be an opportunity for us
Best time to make a post also an opportunity
After analyzing user requests from recent user interviews, support tickets, app markets and emails we came with such hypothesis for research:
The main metrics for my blog performance are post views, visitors, subscribers and engagement.
Users want to see insights on an overview page so I can fix problems and make more blog views and subscribers.
User's blog success is correlated with email performance.
Users want to know when is the best time to make post, so they can reach more engagement and bring more organic traffic on the site.
Interviews
To validate our assumptions, we conducted 8 in-depth user interviews. We showed early-stage tractors and gain valuable feedback:
The current analytics tools are complex and difficult to learn. It requires special knowledge of different tools.
Blog success is collarated with email performance.
There is a need for more personalized analytics that could provide recommendations based on individual blog performance and goals.
Some of the experienced users tried to analyze the best time to make posts during a day. And nobody knows that Wix already has this feature.
Wireframes
Based on our research findings, we prepared wireframes for a new blog analytics app that focused on providing real-time data and insights to help the client improve their blog performance.
Developing an easy-to-use dashboard that would allow content creators and editors to quickly access the most important metrics and insights.
Incorporating analytics that would provide recommendations based on individual blog performance and goals.
Simplifying the navigation to make it easier for users to find the information they needed.
Testing
We conducted first usability testing based on wireframes with a group of content creators and editors to gather feedback and identify any usability issues or pain points. Based on the testing feedback, we made several adjustments to the design, including:
Combine key blog stats and insight in one block to save vertical space and do not hide key blog content
Add Total subscribers
We reduce stats to Post views and Subscribers
Combine Top stats into one table
Add time slots to heat map and change layout
Design
We had few more design iterations, based on Blog team feedback and user testing to come up with a final design:
Results
Work is still in progress. We are planning to release 1 phase in April 2023. When it will be released, we are going to measure such KPI's to understand the success of the product:
% users who interacted with Analytics widget
% users who interacted with Analytics overview page
% Blog users interacted with other Analytics pages
% users interacted with the insights
On the next iteration we are going to add more data such as scroll depth and increase the number of insights based on data we have. Also, we plan to work on customization for dashboard and metrics.
