Marketplace growth was held back by several key challenges
Its hidden location within the main product made it hard for users to discover, leaving its potential untapped.
The marketplace suffered from an outdated design that didn't align with the current brand.
The user experience was frustrating with a cumbersome process for requesting add-on products; unclear forms often forced users to seek help from a Customer Support Specialist just to submit a request.
Placer XTRA - a frequently used additional purchase for customers was not integrated into the marketplace, preventing a centralized location for all add-on purchases.
Internally, the marketing team struggled, requiring significant design and tech support for promotional materials and content updates - leaving the Marketplace with a noticeable lack of content.
To address these issues, a comprehensive plan was implemented to revitalize the Placer.ai Marketplace
The Marketplace underwent a comprehensive rebrand to align with Placer.ai’s evolving visual language. Partnering closely with the brand design team to ensure visual consistency across all products, I led the creation of a dedicated design system tailored specifically for the Marketplace.
An accelerated roadmap demanded the re-brand and development of the MVP within a tight three-month deadline. This severe time constraint led to development and design limitations, as the team had to build the Marketplace using Tailwind's component library, which proved to be very restrictive. Despite these hurdles, we successfully met the deadline through close collaboration between design and development.
The marketing team was also key to the re-design by providing crucial insights into content requirements.
Note: Marketplace is a fully responsive platform
Generating more leads via simple UX
For users with a Placer.ai account, a one-click approach was implemented to reduce friction and generate more leads. For users without a Placer.ai account, a simple form field with as few fields as possible was triggered via clicking on the CTA.
Promoting Placer.ai Marketplace items within the work-flow
While the Placer.ai Marketplace was available via a unique domain, this approach created a disjointed user experience and missed key opportunities for product discovery. To solve this, we introduced a Marketplace drawer embedded directly into the Placer.ai dashboard. This seamless integration allowed us to contextually promote relevant add-on products by indicating their utility within the user's active work-flow. The design ensured that users could access full Marketplace content and request a demo without leaving the main platform, drastically improving conversion efficiency and user retention.
Note: Data in the UI is hidden for confidentiality purposes
Laying the foundation for the Marketing team to generate new listings without relying on others
A huge pain-point for the Marketing Team was their reliance on developers and designers in order to create or edit content. To solve this, we integrated Contentful’s Content Management System which, enabled the marketing team to independently create, edit, and publish content, eliminating their reliance on developers.
Together with the branding team, I designed new design templates and guidelines for the marketing team to be able to produce on-brand promotional materials without needing to wait for design to create it for them.
This led to a much faster turn-over time when new items were added to the Marketplace catalog.
The content design for single datasets and dataset packs was different to differentiate between the two
Some of the design documentation for Marketing to create consistent visuals without designers
Integrating Placer XTRA into the Marketplace
Placer XTRA is where users are able to request reports, advanced maps, or export data via a credit-based system. Previously positioned as a standalone ‘add-on’ product, it was not integrated with other add-ons in the Marketplace. To create a more unified experience, we migrated the entire Placer XTRA catalog into the Marketplace, centralizing all add-on products in one accessible location. This migration also provided an opportunity to enhance the user experience and expand the available content by migrating into the Marketplace’s CMS.
As part of this initiative, I conducted user research—interviewing power users of XTRA and translating their feedback into actionable insights, design improvements, and new features for development. The Placer XTRA forms were often complex and usually required a lot of back and forth between Solutions Engineering and the customer in order to fully understand what exactly they were looking to get from this service. This prolonged the On-Time-Delivery (OTD) and left customers extremely frustrated.
Enhancements included: adding helpful notes at the start of the form, tooltips, feedback text under form fields, and a large free text area. Other enhancements were mapped out and given priority based on how popular the report was and development effort. We also took this opportunity to align all form components with the Placer.ai Design System and use many of their existing solutions. When a design solution was missing, I worked together with the Design System team to build one that covered all use cases across the platform.
Mapping out features to add
Part of the User-Research process
Multiple POI Use Case: Previously, users could select only one location in the form and were required to upload a CSV file with up to ten additional locations for comparison. This process placed the burden on users to ensure all relevant data was included, and missing information often caused report delivery delays.
Following the UX improvements, users can now select multiple locations directly from Placer’s location list. This ensures the Solutions Engineering team receives accurate data with every request, while also reducing user frustration and the time required to complete the form.
The dataset selection after our UX improvements
Dataset Selection Use Case: Previously, users had to download a CSV of all datasets and manually enter dataset names into five separate fields—an inefficient and error-prone process. Our UX solution introduced a hierarchical tree of available datasets, allowing users to select them directly. This significantly streamlined the workflow, reducing form completion time and improving the overall user experience.
The dataset fields before our UX improvements