Getting users to their data faster and better
A strategic touch-up of Bizminer’s data analytics platform for clarity and confidence.
Bizminer is an industry data and analytics platform that lets users search for and buy industry reports. The company has been in business for over 20 years and has a large user base of accounting, valuation, brokerage, banking, CRE and consulting professionals, and business students.
Users come to Bizminer looking to benchmark, compare, and explore industries and markets and leverage insights to make decisions, solve challenges, and advise clients.
Bizminer’s value is in its fresh, granular data. It helps the user understand their business decisions and customize for various scenarios.
Database includes:
16 million+ businesses
9000+ industries
41,000+ markets
5,550+ industry financials
Used by:
200,000 Business Students
Thousands of professionals
Project Details
Timeline: 7 weeks
Duration: September 2022 - November 2022
Tools: Miro, Figma, Zoom, UsabilityHub
Stakeholders:
Danny Burke, CEO of Bizminer
Nolan Walker, VP of Product
I started by interviewing the stakeholders
I spoke with Danny Burke, CEO, and Nolan Walker, VP of Product to ensure the scope and goals of the project were in alignment.
What I asked the stakeholders
Who uses Bizminer?
What are they looking to do?
What do you already know about the user experience?
Who are the competitors?
What is the ideal outcome of this UX work?
I got organized with affinity mapping. There was a lot of information to take in during the stakeholder interview. I made sure to take notes and then utilize affinity mapping to condense the insights gathered from our time together.
What I learned
Recent site re-design left users wanting
When Burke bought Bizminer in 2020, he and the team decided to do a “rip off the bandaid” approach to making changes to the website. The entire platform was overhauled and redesigned and the users have been very vocal about new pain points. A major pain point is product selection.
Older users who have been customers for longer have been challenged by the new designs.
The possibilities for improvements are many
The Bizminer platform is very robust. It offers 3 distinct tools.
Research financial and market data from over 9,000 industry segments.
Analyze by comparing specific company information to industry peers.
Prospect and understand the total addressable market and identify partners, competitors, and strategic acquirers.
Bizminer’s 3 Big Asks
There were a lot of possible avenues to explore with this platform, because of the time constraints, I narrowed down my focus to 3 outcomes
1. Shorten time spent searching and purchasing
The company’s current data shows that many users are starting the process of running a report, but stopping halfway through. Additionally, users might be getting to the end of the flow, but not following through with a purchase.
2. Make filtering process frictionless
It’s really important that this is an easy-to-use tool for users of all ranges of skills, from the pizza shop owner to the consultant. The stakeholders emphasized wanting to create an experience that was enjoyable, not just tolerable.
3. Any other relevant changes - even something small
The stakeholders emphasized that “even one small tweak” to the experience would be a success for this project.
They were interested in having “another set of eyes” on the platform and were open to anything else I might find relevant to improving.
I conducted a competitor analysis
profitcents
Industrious CFO
zoominfo
Competitive analysis provided a good background to the industry but it didn’t yield any “aha’s”. Now that I had a basic grounding I set out to get more insights into Bizminer’s unique challenges directly from their current users.
Qualitative research with users revealed changes in two areas could make a huge difference…
30-45
Minute Interviews
9
Current Users
What I asked
Profession. Consultants, accountants, professors, business owners, and students use this platform.
Reason for using Bizminer.
Amount of time as user. Many have been customers for 10+ years and have seen Bizminer v1.0 and v2.0 - and many prefer the old Bizminer.
Pain Points. Just as in the stakeholder interview, I heard a lot of possible problems to fix with this robust platform.
Filters
Reports
Intuition and Training
More affinity mapping to organize and draw insights from all the data that was collected from interviews.
What I Discovered
I could address 2 problems that impact every user regardless of what tool they are using.
I spent a lot of time practicing using the Bizminer platform. I immersed myself in the user flows and looked at sample reports so that I fully understood the information that I was hearing from users.
The platform was just completely redesigned, so I wasn’t going to overhaul entire user flows. I also couldn’t address systemic issues such as the low sales of the analysis tool (a tool that makes up 1/3 of the platform).
However, I did discover that I could address two pain points that every user experiences regardless of what tool they are using: Every customer carries out a selection process for any search they are conducting, and every customer interacts with the checkout process.
Problem #1 Frustrating selection process
Users said:
“The dropdown menu is not clearing out when selection is made”
“All filters reset if one mistake is made”
“The font is so small”
Problem #2 Unclear checkout process
Users said:
“I don’t know what I’m buying”
“I’d like useful information after clicking ‘Access Now’, not information about the company”
"You can't customize before downloading, but you are charged when you download the report."
Design Solutions
Improvement to the selection process:
Dropdown list visual hierarchy
Before
Dead-end
❌ No indicators of selection
There are no visual indicators to let the user know which selection has been made. There’s no color change or underline, there’s no animation, and the drop-down box also stays open. The user is at a standstill and nothing is pulling them through the flow.
❌ Small Margins
It is difficult to differentiate between the categories/subcategories because the indentations are not large enough.
❌ Slow loading times
Loading times are not something I can control as the UX designer, but I mention it to note that users are spending a lot of time waiting.
A user is waiting up to 7 seconds after each click. This is a drill-down process where many, many clicks are happening.
After
Clear
✅ Add a“Select” button
Provides clarity of selection. The user can now continue drilling down in each category and have certainty that once they choose “select” the correct selection has been made.
Provides an exit from the dropdown box. Now the box clears and the user can continue on in the flow.
✅ Improved visual contrast of dropdown text
Grey out the selections not in use.
Add color and weight to the current selection
Larger indentations between categories and subcategories. More apparent indentations help the user stay organized in the process.
Improvement to the selection process:
Replacing the reset button
Before
Frustrating
❌ Forced to reset and start over
After having to guess whether their selection was correctly input, the user must click away from the dropdown box to clear it. The button they initially used to get into the dropdown box then turns into a NAICS code (a numeric label for their industry selection) attached to a reset button.
Meaning if someone needs to get back into that dropdown, their selections are reset and they have to start over.
After
Satisfying
✅ Add selection labels
I removed a NAICS code/reset button.
I replaced it with a label that contains the full name of the industry selection and an x if the user needs to clear it.
This change provides more clarity and is more consistent with current UX standards.
Replacing the reset button saves users potentially several minutes
(and a lot of frustration) because their selections are no longer being accidentally reset.
Improvement to the checkout process:
“View Report Preview” button
Before
Okay
❌ “Access Now”
After clicking “Access Now” the user is prompted to enter billing information for a $299 purchase with no further context about what they are buying.
This is a big barrier to purchase and for those who do make the purchase, some have done so not fully understanding what they were getting
After
Better
✅ “View Report Preview”
From there, they will be able to view a watermarked preview of the report. When users are finished filtering, they will click “View Report Preview” instead of being prompted to make a purchase.
Improvement to the checkout process:
Report Previews
Before
Unclear
❌ What am I buying?
The old checkout experience took the user directly to the price and a prompt to input their billing information. Users at times were purchasing reports that they weren’t able to customize after purchase, or simply not making the purchase.
After
Clear
✅ Watermarked Report Preview
The new design features a watermarked preview. This allows the user to go through the report so they understand the type of information they are getting while still hiding the valuable details that will be shown after purchase.
💡
I drew from my experience as an educator for this solution.
When selecting digital sheet music for students of all different skill levels - and at times out of my own pocket for it - I needed to make sure the material was the correct level for each student. Lots of digital sheet music sites feature a watermarked preview of the product.
Putting it all together
Summary
This is a large platform that I only had 7 weeks to work on. I decided to focus on efficiency, with actionable solutions that delivered the most direct impact to users.
✔️ Improve Visual Hierarchy. I recommended small visual changes to the filtering process so users know how to get to the right product.
✔️Add Report Previews. I designed solutions so the customer knows what product they are buying (and doesn’t give up before purchase!)