2021 | Microsoft
2021 | Microsoft

Addressing Legacy

How can we improve a web app built with no design team?

Microsoft's Customer Insights is a web app that addresses customer data being spread across too many different sources by holding it in one place, making it easier for businesses to derive insights and adhere to consent.

Our goal was to acknowledge legacy experiences that are receiving poor feedback from users and fix them. I specifically worked on our onboarding, an external connections page, and the home page.

What we fixed

The marketing page now shows in search results

The top non-ad search results for “cdp microsoft” or “customer data platform by microsoft” didn’t link to the marketing page, but to a Microsoft definition page of a what a CDP is.

We notified our Marketing team and the results were updated so that both the first ad and non-ad results were our marketing page for Customer Insights.

A before and after of Google's search results for "cdp microsoft"

The marketing page is clearer

The marketing page wasn’t transparent on what the product did or how it worked. It also showed misleading UI and failed to mention that the demo and trial are free.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights marketing page before redesignDynamics 365 Customer Insights marketing page after redesign

Signing up is much easier

Our funnel data showed only 2% of visitors got to the free demo. David Dossett and I removed as much friction as possible to reduce the barrier to entry.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights sign up page before redesignDynamics 365 Customer Insights sign up flow before redesignDynamics 365 Customer Insights flow after redesign

The demo is now helpful

To go with the brand new home page design, tours now clearly explain new features, an industry-specific demo selector has been added, and banners are used to promote new capabilities.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights home and demo page before redesignDynamics 365 Customer Insights demo page after redesign

Users can try with their own data — free

This actually already existed but no messages were ever shown to let customers know how, or how many days they had left to try it. We fixed both.

A close up cropped image showing the teaching bubble mentioning users can try the product with their own data for free3 message bar examples mentioning how many days the user has left in their trial

A new home

Users can now see their total amount of unique customers right on the home page, recent segments or metrics, new feature announcements, and fast access to app connections.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights home and demo page before redesignDynamics 365 Customer Insights home page after redesign

Making connections

Previously, there was no place to see the possible connections that Customer Insights could make to other apps. I designed a hub to remedy that.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights connections page after completion

Closing thoughts

An image showing a customer using Customer Insights on an iPad with a keyboard

This was an incredibly difficult challenge to tackle. Changing already-existing products is never an easy task.

There are still so many areas where I believe improvements can be made, but the product has come a long way and we continue to hear the changes have been for the better.