PROJECT OVERVIEW

The Problem:

The goal of an email campaign is to generate leads and ultimately revenue. However, this can’t happen unless emails actually reach the inbox. By sending to addresses with typos or to invalid users, a company’s reputation becomes damaged and ISPs like Gmail will block them. SparkPost’s Recipient Validation is a service that checks the validity of email addresses and returns a clean list to send with.

My Role:

Lead UX Designer (reasearch, wire framing, visual design, prototyping, user testing)

RESEARCH AND DISCOVERY

Competitive Analysis: DO A TABLE

I began my research and discovery by exploring the existing players in this space. I did an analysis by visiting their sites, signing up for the services, and going through the validation process. I also spoke with some of our current customers who have used a number of other services to get their insights.

While there are a number of competitors in this space, I have briefly summarized my findings for our top two, Kickbox and BriteVerify.

KICKBOX:General Observations: Nice, clean UI. very very nice. Instills confidenceValidation: Has recently verified table, nice touch so you don’t have to reverify the same address twice • Shows results by category and detail as well as raw API respo… — **KICKBOX:**
**General Observations:** Nice, clean UI. very very nice. Instills confidence
**Validation:** Has recently verified table, nice touch so you don’t have to reverify the same address twice • Shows results by category and detail as well as raw API response
**Interaction, feedback, navigation:** Nice feedback when you upload list so you know it’s still there • Big icons after you validate are strong visual cue to your results • Nice rollover on activity chart showing you category results • Notification options in account section, very helpful
**Education:** List out educational and learn more links in bottom nav, nice touch

BriteVerify:General Observations: Overall nice, clean elegant ui with helpful interactions.Validation: Nice, clean, simple DV and tables showing validation results • Download results a few ways, by category, all results, seems helpful • Shows cost o… — **BriteVerify:**
**General Observations:** Overall nice, clean elegant ui with helpful interactions.
**Validation:** Nice, clean, simple DV and tables showing validation results • Download results a few ways, by category, all results, seems helpful • Shows cost of validation batch the whole time, even on results page. Is this necessary? • It separates out category results into different cards.
**Interaction, feedback, navigation:** Huge Salesforce banner at top with no way of closing it. Distracting • Good feedback as list uploads, what stage of process you are in like • Type size of header is quite large and upload form size is quite small, so you can’t see full name of list • Nice interactivity on results charts.

Personas:

Poor sender reputation is a known issue in the email delivery space, and it touches just about every user involved in the process. That said, I wanted to know more about which users are directly experiencing the pains caused by this issue.

I wanted to speak to our customer success team and technical account managers who interact with our customers daily. After sitting down with them, it was clear that users who are responsible for customer lists and new user sign ups are ultimately on the line when things go wrong. Therefore, they are typically the ones who require and use validation services.

Marketing and Sales Ops: With form completions, trade shows, webinars, and more, marketing teams have a variety of ways to legitimately acquire email addresses. This is also a common place where things go wrong, like someone fat-fingering their emai… — **Marketing and Sales Ops:** With form completions, trade shows, webinars, and more, marketing teams have a variety of ways to legitimately acquire email addresses. This is also a common place where things go wrong, like someone fat-fingering their email address, providing bogus information to gain access, or a bot completing forms.

My Approach

User and Client Needs

Before I do any mapping or sketching, I like to put myself in the eye of the user so I can really think about what their raw needs and experiences are. What is going on in their heads? What are their frustrations and successes? I then follow the same process from the point of view of the business and its key stakeholders. Only when I look at these together can I then move on to the next step.

Information Architecture and User Flows

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Wireframes

I began to map out the flows into wireframes. After preliminary user testing, feedback, home page, etc.

Copy of Recipient Validation