G2Xchange
G2Xchange delivers community driven solutions and insight intended to meet the needs of the busy Federal executive charged with growth.
The world of government contracting (GovCon) has been known to be inaccessible, and complicated for small businesses and newcomers, G2Xchange (G2X) aims to change that by making information easily accessible and providing information for companies to make informed choices. They’ve relied on word-of-mouth marketing to attract users to the site and the site was designed with the assumption that these visitors already knew what G2X offered and why they were better than their competitors.
With new ownership, they wanted to increase product users and make G2X a name everyone in the government contracting space knew about. My team and I were tasked with redesigning the landing page of G2X to better convey the services and benefits of the products, make information easier to find, and make frictionless sign-up and free-trial flows.
The site failed to inform people what G2X does and how it’s a benefit to them, to make information easy to find, and make the sign-up convenient.
Old G2Xchange Landing Page
The landing page and consecutive sites failed to inform people what services G2Xchange provides and how it’s a benefit to them.
Old G2Xchange Landing Page
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G2Xchange Site Flow
The old sign-up process relied heavily on the customer success team and keeps users waiting up to two days before they receive their account information and ability to access the site.
Sign-up Flow
To understand the Customer Success team's role during the sign-up process and their overall interaction with customers I sat down with one of the team members and had them walk me through the process of account creation for new users as well as understanding what their days usually looked like.
I learned that the majority of the accounts created were normally for individual users or corporate accounts that were looking for about 20 seats and under.
Since we were the first design team coming in and none of us had worked in GovCon in any way before the most important thing for us was to understand our users and the different categories they fell into as well as some basics of GovCon.
We did a 2-week research sprint to gather information and develop personas.
I started our research by talking to stakeholders to understand what were the important points they really wanted to convey to new users and to learn what they already knew about the current users.
I wanted to understand how other popular GovCon sites spotlighted their features to users and some of the messaging they used.
I looked to understand how our main user types used the site, how it has helped them in their day to day duties, and how they looked through sites when looking for a new service.
We were able to create 3 fleshed out personas based off of our research.
Time is an important factor for all three personas.
They want to quickly and clearly understand the value they are getting without sifting through pages.
Our user base informed the decisions on what selling points to push and how to talk about them in a way that is relevant to their duties.
A new site flow was created to create less confusion about the products and services that G2Xchange offers.
A new sign-up flow and pricing structure were developed to help take some of the work off of the Customer Success (CS) team and get users into the site quicker.
Based on the research, most new sign-ups were either single memberships or looking for looking for under 20 seats per account, they are now able to create their own accounts without having to wait on the CS team to verify and issue accounts. Helping to cut down the amount of time the CS team spends on this task and freeing up their time to connect in other ways with users.
Government employees, companies that want over 20 seats, and users that were interested in a custom plan that combined Health and FedCiv still have to reach out via a form to the CS team.
As we wrapped up our research, the stakeholders decided they wanted to include a free trial due to the new landing page putting the original site behind a paywall.
They still wanted people to be able to try out the site and allow the site prove that a membership was worth the investment.
Taking the information learned during our research phase, I applied the findings to my sketches and wireframes, as a team we reviewed at each step and combined ideas that we thought would best align with the research and what our stakeholders wanted.
The team moved through various iterations of the landing page before we landed on two different versions that we could show to stakeholders before taking through user testing.
Although there was a rebrand in the works, we were limited to using the current branding that was provided from the marketing team.
We also had to keep in mind the current users and to avoid deterring them with a completely different site, we designed with them in mind and stuck to a lot of the imagery and design that they were accustom to.
Before heading into user testing, we talked through our design and the decisions we made with the stakeholders to get feedback from them. We made some minor changes before moving into user testing and held off on bigger changes to see if the user testing pointed out the same things.
During our user testing I was looking to see if:
Users would prefer a condensed version of the features to quickly read through.
Stakeholders wanted to include a section that better defined the value proposition to new users.
The final product was a new landing page that lets users know what G2Xchange is all about and how they can help their business to succeed within the government contracting space.
We were able to deliver a new landing page, updated information architecture, site flow, and sign up flow that helped:
Based off of user testing, we added a new section that succinctly states what we offer and the benefits.
This was our biggest goal with the redesign.
Based off of user testing, we added a new section that succinctly states what we offer and the benefits.
This was our biggest goal with the redesign.
Taking the feedback from our stakeholders, this section was used to define our value proposition.
Taking the feedback from our stakeholders, this section was used to define our value proposition.
On the previous site, users had to click into each page to find out what Health or FedCiv focuses on.
With the new designs, we removed the unnecessary click and share the info upfront.
On the previous site, users had to click into each page to find out what Health or FedCiv focuses on.
With the new designs, we removed the unnecessary click and share the info upfront.
A more detailed look into the features that are offered and how they can benefit users to achieve their goals.
A more detailed look into the features that are offered and how they can benefit users to achieve their goals.
Trusted sources that evangelize the product. That shares their experience with the product, how they use it, and how it's benefited them.
Trusted sources that evangelize the product. That shares their experience with the product, how they use it, and how it's benefited them.
With the updates to the landing page we were able to:
The updated site, increased the amount of unique visitors as well as the length of time people stayed on the site.
The updated landing page, the introduction of a 14-day trial, and an updated account sign-up flow led to an increase in customer sign-ups.
This was my first time leading and managing a team, it was a real step outside of my comfort zone.
As a leader my goal for the team was to make sure everyone felt heard and felt comfortable to share their thoughts. It was also important that we were all on the same page and meeting our sprint goals.
After we passed off the project, the devs were unable to fully ship the design due to the version of wordpress.
Bringing in the dev team sooner as we thought and designed our interactions would have helped the design team to understand the technical constraints.
