The time has come and you need to redesign and re-engineer your product or a key product functionality. What do you do next? How do you inform customers?
It’s not easy to change the product´s look and feel or inform your customers about what has changed without interrupting their work.
Imagine that your users have used their old reports for the last 5 years or so. They definitely need something new which will help their productivity and you´re excited about implementing that new technology. Your product designers gave their best to come up with redesigns and you did your job to run exploratory interviews to see what you can get to enhance the reports.
In a B2B software world, though, switching to a new view or sunsetting a functionality is not so straightforward. As a product manager in a B2B world, I’m sure that you know about your ´indirect clients´, your stakeholders such as account managers, technical support, sales and customer success. How do you go about changing something for the good of all users, but making the transition as smooth as possible for your users and not entering into a conflict with your stakeholders?
Carry on reading and find out some quick tips which can prevent you from having further headaches 🙂
Why do we redesign software products?
There are many reasons why we need to consider product redesign:
- Product compliance
Your products should comply with the others in a product suite.
- Change of the product portfolio
The product portfolio and guidelines for designs have changed to visually unify past products or products that the company has recently acquired.
- Your current product design doesn´t have room for scalability
- New functionalities clutter the design and your new redesigns simplify things
- Expansion in new markets
- Customer feedback showed that it’s best to change your product
- Merge two platforms and unify features
This was my most recent case. We had to get rid of an old data visualization software for hotel reports (which still had paying users!) and build up the features of a competing one (with a different user base of paying customers) which was meant to replace it.
Quite a complex and sensitive case as one platform lacked the features of the other one. Different usability and experience, a roadmap to build the missing features and a plan to execute the transition.
Internal communication first
The internal communication is key for the success of your product change. Some ideas about what you can do:
- Send an email to the key stakeholders and announce the key changes in regards to what will change and when
Pro tip: If you don’t get any replies or a reaction, put your storyteller´s hat on and inspire others. Tell the story behind what will change and when, why, how the customers will benefit from it.
If you don´t know what you´ll do or you´re still unsure, be transparent about it and ask for the honest feedback of stakeholders.
- Organize a quick webinar to present the planned product changes
A quick walkthrough can be helpful. Don´t forget that your colleagues can bring you the best feedback from clients and can raise a red flag on time. Listen to them carefully, read between the lines and react accordingly. You´ve one common goal: happy customers and more revenue.
- Announce the change and evangelize the need for it in a company or a product demo meeting
Redesigning a big portion of the product or a full module
You have some options here.
- Keep both old and the new version for some time
In my case, I´ve decided to redesign the hotel cancellations report in the data visualization platform which was meant to stay and bring new features to it. The latter were based on the needs of the current business users and added extra value when compared to the old data visualization software. However, the product design is subjective, because it was a way better, BUT some users are never ready to make a switch as they are used to what they have.
The solution was to keep both the old and the new report in the data visualization platform that we wanted to stay. Thus, I could prepare the users for the transition and gather feedback along the way. At the same time, we´ve shown the design of the new report to the users of the old data visualization software and highlighted the added value with the extra features.
Why?
- Prepare both user groups for an upcoming change
- Gather user feedback
- Don´t interrupt user´s daily work and unobtrusively introduce the ´new´ design and functionalities
- ´Sell´ the imminent change by providing the extra value
How?
- Inform users with a product newsletter
- Prepare a video to walk them through the new report and help them unlock the value
- Inform that the new report will eventually replace the older one and why
- Inspire users of the old platform to offer an ´exclusive free trial´ for the new data visualization software
- Remember to update your product content and rewrite your product user guides if necessary
- Communicate internally why and until when you´ll keep both reports
- Once the user from the same user account clicks on the ´New´ report for the first time, show them a short and informative video directly in the application to increase the interaction and engagement
- Prepare user surveys to collect feedback
- Make sure you have all your product tracking in place in order to analyze the product usage results and turn them into insights
- Small changes
Any smaller platform changes and product redesign can be communicated effectively with in-product notifications. Focus on a short messaging to help you manage the change and users can adapt to the redesigned interface.
You can communicate the redesign in a small modal window in the tool. From a product UX perspective, modal dialogs interrupt users and prompt an action, so they are relevant when the user’s attention needs to focus on important information (such as a redesign). I´m pretty happy about the results of modal dialogs if used appropriately as my experience shows that a notification in the application does not receive so much attention and can be left unseen. Read more about implementing (or not) modal windows here.
Some examples and inspiration I like from a product UX perspective, depending on the use case:
SOURCE HERE
Alternatively, you can craft a full walkthrough for the new platform and have a self-guided user tour.
