The Challenge

Small business owners and medical practices are too busy managing their day-to-day operations so often have trouble staying on top of their leads. This results in missed opportunities and mishandled customer relationships. Internally, we needed a more streamlined language for individuals across the product, design and development teams so we could more quickly and efficiently meet the growing needs of our 40,000+ customers.

Role // Lead UI Designer
Activities // UI/UX design, usability testing, documentation, development support
Deliverables // Visual design system, documentation, usability testing
Client // In-house at Yodle – NYC

The Company

Yodle is a premier technology company offering software for small business owners to better manage their day-to-day operations. Yodle Essentials, Lighthouse and Centermark are their main client-facing dashboards and are used by 40k+ small businesses throughout the country. I led the interface design on all three, working closely with a team of interaction designers, product managers, software engineers, and front-end developers in an agile environment.

(Yodle was acquired by web.com in 2016.)

Objectives

  • Redesign an outdated visual system with a newly created set of interactions
  • Create a branded style guide as a visual template for each of Yodle’s products so that they can also be customized for each business’ branding when needed
  • Establish a process within the organization that would help make the transition from design to development more seamless and efficient

Product Suite and Feature Highlights

  • Allows SMBs to request and manage customer reviews for a large number of sites (such as Bing, Yelp, Yellow Pages, Yext and Yahoo) without leaving the platform.
  • Offers analytics such as data on call leads and voicemails that are made directly from unique Yodle websites. SMBs can also rate leads and make notes about prospective customers.
  • Offers back end management for Yodle websites (such as discount creation), performance tracking, and CRM management tailored to the business’ unique style.
  • Centermark is a product for Yodle for Brand Networks, Yodle’s national department, making it the national counterpart to Essentials. It is used by large franchisors such as AAMCO, MAACO and Miracle Ear.
  • Lighthouse is a leading retention platform acquired from Lighthouse 360 in 2013. Since then, Yodle has more than doubled Lighthouse 360’s original client base, and has generated more than $45 million in company revenue between January and June 2014.

Outcome

With usability testing and working with teams across the company, I created a visual system that could accommodate new interactions, products and patterns that the UX team built. Designs worked together under the main Yodle brand, while also catering to the different types of customers who use each product. Our new systems allowed the development team to be more self-sufficient, which was incredibly important at a time when going seamlessly to code was still a very new concept.

The style guide below is a snippet of the extensive set of UI elements that created a strong foundation for Yodle’s product offerings.