Small home business owners currently utilize various social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook for business promotion, alongside other platforms for bookings and sales. Additionally, they rely on services like Yelp and Google Maps for client visibility and use LinkTree to consolidate their online presence. However, this fragmented approach often leads to client confusion and difficulty in locating trustworthy businesses.
Introduce a dedicated social media platform tailored for business-client interaction. Think if Instagram, Linked In, and Yelp had a love child - that child would be Bizinc.io
This case study delves into the development of the Explore Page within Bizinc.io, our innovative social media platform. The Explore Page features an interactive map, facilitating seamless business discovery for clients within their local vicinity directly on our platform. (For insights into our MVP design, refer to the Bizinc.io MVP case study coming soon.)
I Conducted a visual competitor analysis focusing on Yelp, Google Maps, and Apartments.com, major map-based search engines, emphasizing mobile platforms due to our users' mobile-centric behavior. Evaluated UI elements, search/filter functionality, business cards, and included information.
Despite aiming for 5-6 interviews, conducted 3 due to time constraints. Explored recent experiences with location-based apps, criteria for evaluating local businesses, and opinions on advanced filter search options for an interactive map.
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Derived insights from interviews to create an Affinity Diagram and Empathy Map. Key findings: user pain points and goals (reflected in the client user persona below), essential information for business cards to enhance local business trust, including images, street view, ratings, testimonials, distance, hours, verification, and direct CTA links.
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Bizinc.io has two user personas: Business Owners and Clients. Although an Owner can also be a client, distinct behaviors on the platform necessitate separate personas. As clients primarily utilize the Explore Page, focus was on the client persona: Morgan Davis. Morgan is a 27 year old young professional black women living in Atlanta. She appreciates and loves fashion, beauty trends, staying up to date on social media, getting brunch with her friends, and self care. She takes pride in being the best version of herself at all times. She works out, journals, reads books, and eats clean.
Client habits include: Frequent use ofsocial media apps - primarily Instagram and TikTok. Treating herself to getting her nails and hair done, as well as other beauty services. She drives, but prefers not to go too far from her community for beauty services. To build trust she looks at the quality of images & brand (logos), and presence on social media, and ratings (needs at least 3 stars)
Bizinc is developing an interactive map / explore page product to help business owners showcase their business to local clients. We’re better because we will provide users with one app for interacting with businesses in avariety of ways that also allows clients to search for local businesses using easy-to-navigate advanced filters, and provide key up-to-date information, ratings, branding, and images for users about local businesses to make informed decisions quickly and easily. We’re believable because our organization works with business owners to increase their online presence and brand legitimacy.
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In the Bizinc.io MVP case study (coming soon) I go into depth about the creation of Bizinc.io’s UI Style guide. To keep repetition down, here I will summarize our Style Guide and focus on color. Our design ethos at Bizinc.io centers around minimalism, allowing business owners' content to shine. The UI predominantly features white backgrounds, complemented by subtle greys and accents in our signature Bizinc Blue—a teal hue chosen for its trust-building and innovative connotations.
Crafting a Unique Explore Page: Given the visually rich background of the interactive map on the Explore Page, I opted for restrained color usage in our components to prevent user overstimulation. To maintain simplicity, we optimized card layouts with small font sizes, ensuring readability without clutter. Color highlights are limited to essential elements like the Open/Closed indicator and Bizinc Verified and License badges, while the vibrant hues predominantly stem from map imagery and business photos.
During the building of the Explore Page, to streamline development and maintain user familiarity, as the UX team we devised a filter page that can be seamlessly implemented across our various products with minimal adjustments.
Project: Designed TeachersDrink.com from research through Front-End dev.
Overview: From crafting cocktails with quirky names to wrestling with Front End development this case study shows the balance between imagination & reality: Where my designs outpaced my coding skills, leading to simplification for the MVP; and amidst the fun, my initial designs were to kitsch, prompting a big pivot mid design. This journey from whimsy to sophistication underscores the iterative nature of design work.
Overview: From intern to UX team manager, led the design of bizinc.io Beta 2.0 MVP.
My Role: UX/UI intern, UX/UI team manager, and social media content creator.
Overview: Created a prototype of the landing page for the top level domain .c
My Role: Freelance UX/UI researcher and deigner.
Take Away: When I was contracted to create a landing page for the top-level handshake domain .c I was excited and a bit nervous due to my lack of knowledge… “What is a handshake domain”? During this work, I learned a great dealabout domains and helped reshape the stakeholder's target audience in the process.
