Product Design

I re-designed a lead management pipeline

Gham Power, a multiple award-winning solar company, had been working with microfinance organizations to make their IoT-based yield improvement solutions more accessible to rural farmers. They had even designed a lead collector application for that very purpose. I was brought in to increase lead generation and improve the pre-existing app.

Problem

The users were finding the current method complicated and difficult

The original application was serving two purposes: lead collection and gathering data on farmers. This meant that for a lead to be registered, the entire farming details of that farmer would have to be registered as well. There were 27 mandatory fields and 20+ additional fields that were optional. The form took more than 6 minutes and 40 seconds to fill out completely.

My Role

Working as the primary design lead, I had a few roles to fulfill. While working on this project, I was responsible for

Conducting user interviews and user testing
Designing a questionnaire that would help us quantify the user’s behavior, requirements, and needs
Create an application that met the spec
Look after the design handover to the development team, as well as plan and conduct alpha testing

Approach

How we solved the problem

The existing lead generation method had been used for more than a year already and it involved people from different organizations. And the involvement of multiple parties meant that a drastic re-design would have to be backed with a strong rationale.

User research and user testing

Interacting with the users was important at every step of the way. Since the users were microfinance employees working in rural areas of Nepal, I had a lot to learn about them. I conducted user inter interviews, both virtually and on-site, to understand them better. I had to understand their daily life, their work life, and their way of operations. It was also important to understand their relationship with the current application, and their problems. and their aspirations. I also conducted multiple rounds of user testing and feedback gathering as soon as the prototypes were ready. This helped gather constant validation that the re-design was a step in the right direction.

Some photos that were taken during on-site user research in remote areas of Nepal

Data based decision making

Every user interaction was based on pre-planned questionnaires designed to separate the data into quantifiable metrics. This helped in removing a significant amount of subjectivity and helped in making objective and data-based decisions.

MVP release and AB testing before scaling

Since the re-design was a radical step, we decided to not go all-in at once. We first created an MVP, tested it for three months, gathered all the feedback, and then re-iterated it before making the platform available to all our microfinance partners. Even the smallest interactions were thoroughly discussed and experimented with before committing to a concept.

Some of the early prototypes that would be the base of the final design

Solution

Highlights of the outcome

There was a lot of uncertainty with regards to the re-design before it was launched. Would the user group accept the re-design? Would the re-design drive up the lead generation? These questions were valid and prominent before the product was launched. Despite the self-doubt and the preliminary resistance, the outcomes were worth everything.

User Acceptance

Before the redesign, an average of 13 leads were generated by one branch of the microfinance organization in a month. However, after the redesign, an average of 50 leads were generated by one branch of the same microfinance organization in a month.

A minimal redesign

The data gathering purpose of the pre-existing application was completely dropped and the app was redesigned to only collect leads. This led to a minimal application with just 2 mandatory fields and two additional fields to fill out optionally. This reduced the lead collection time from more than 6 minutes to 20 seconds.

The final look and feel of the application dedicated to lead generation

Brand new lead management pipeline

When we started working on the lead collection system, we soon realized that our lead management system was also lacking. We also worked on a detailed lead classification system and a suitable lead management platform to tie it all up.

The final lead management pipeline

Reflections