Design Challenge: How might we find a way for advertisers to reach a targeted audience within TeamSnap while improving the user experience?
Background
TeamSnap’s mission is to take the work out of play for its 22M users and is the #1 sports team management software and app for coaches, managers and organizers. There is a range of plans from free to paid and the paid plans account for a significant portion of TeamSnap’s revenue. With more competitors offering free alternatives, TeamSnap made the strategic bet to invest heavily in a new line of business— Advertising & E-commerce—to diversity the monetization strategy.
The initial Advertising strategy was predominantly comprised of adding banner adds and interstitials—a majority were indirect—to the mobile and web experiences. The response from users was largely negative and TeamSnap saw a drop in app store reviews.
Advertising was crucial to the long term strategy, but clearly needed to be examined. I launched an advertising audit to figure out where advertising was most disruptive to the user’s experience and determined where we should remove ads.
To hit the Advertising team’s revenue goals, the Product Manager on the Advertising team said we would also need to find new places for TeamSnap’s global partners to reach targeted audiences in unique ways, and the Assignments feature was the area we agreed had the most potential as users were already mentioning brands there on their own. By improving the feature and making it easier for coaches and managers to delegate tasks, I also made it possible for food and beverage brands to reach the right audience at the right moment and offer and additional delight to the user.
Results
Within one month of launching the redesigned Assignments feature, TeamSnap had already closed just under $1M in partnership deals associated with sponsored assignments. As the number of sponsored assignments that can be displayed at once is limited as to not overwhelm the user with too many options, in Q1 the partnerships team was able to sell out the spots for rest of the year
Originally Assignments was a paid feature, but with the tremendous success of sponsored assignments, we were able to make it free for all users giving more users access to a valuable and timesaving tool.
The Advertising Audit
There were 122 logged support issues and complaints and 38 negative app store reviews regarding advertising in a 10 week period. No one had a grapple on just how many banner ads a user was seeing in a typical session, so I began by documenting the different user flows for different personas and documenting when, where and how many ads were displayed to them.
The main takeaway was that there were too many banner ads shown overall, but particularly to new users. I recommended that ads be introduced to users more gradually as users added content to their own teams. Originally we followed the iAB guideline that no more than 30% of a screen should be ads, but I proposed this should change to 30% of content on the screen, so teams with little information added yet would not feel bombarded by ads.
By removing banner ad placements, we would impact how many views certain ads would get which would directly impact the Advertising team’s revenue projections. We needed to find other ways to help the team makeup for the lost revenue but did not disrupt the users’ experience.
Collaborating with the PM on the Advertising team and other mobile designers, I outlined the following four principles to guide how we would find a new way for brands to advertise within TeamSnap:
The experience had to be unique to TeamSnap
Brands were willing to pay a premium for new ways to engage with users
Reach an audience at the right place at the right time
While banner ads were a “spray and pray” strategy for reaching an audience, finding more targeted ways of reaching an attentive audience would lead to higher conversion rates and success for the advertising campaign.
Feel less intrusive to users
TeamSnap partners with brands that our users love and use already like Gatorade, Goldfish and Dunkin’ Donuts. These brands should appear to users in places where they may expect them.
Provide value to users
Rather than just displaying ads to a user, we wanted to provide value to users - whether that is a coupon, exclusive offer, sports related content or unlocking new features.
With the above criteria, one area that seemed perfect for advertising partner engagement was Assignments for food and beverage brands.
The Assignments Feature
A majority of youth sports coaches and managers are unpaid volunteers. While the bulk of the tasks fall on the coaches’ or managers’ plates, there are other ways parents on the team can pitch in as well - from bringing snacks to covering a shift at the concession stand. The Assignments feature was created to help the coaches and managers delegate and track those tasks.
While our primary goal was to find a way to include advertising partners in Assignments, we took a step back and wanted to make sure that any changes we made also made the feature easier to use and enhanced the UX.
We started by examining what users were currently entering into the description field—snacks, snacks and more snacks—and noticed there were clear patterns of what users were inputting and that users were already mentioning some brands by name, like Gatorade.
Key Insights for Updating Assignments
The initial Assignments feature was hacked together a few years ago using an iOS alert modal and never revisited. It was time for a refresh and we let the following user insights drive the direction of the new design:
There are consistent assignments across teams
If users across teams were inputing the same assignments, we could save users time by creating a list of assignments to chose from in addition to a custom option.
Change “Who” to “Volunteer”
The label “Who” was confusing for many users. It also was not clear that a coach or manager could leave an assignment as “Unassigned” letting other parents on the team volunteer.
Displaying logos is important to brands
While many users were already entering brand names into the description field, brands wanted a way to be front and center when a coach or manager was making an assignment. Also at that moment, brands would be willing to pay a premium to have their logo displayed. The new description field needed to be able to accommodate logos.
Redesigned Assignments
Part 1: Improve the Existing Feature
Assignments changed into a full modal experience to make it more consistent with current iOS patterns.
When the “Description” field is selected, the user can now select from some of the most popular assignments to save time. If they type in a custom assignments, the suggested assignments disappear.
Icons were added next to assignment descriptions. This not only made assignments pop out more on the Event Detail screen, but also gave brands a place to display their logos.
Advertising partners are clearly labeled as “Sponsored” to be transparent with our users.
The modified the screen for picking the volunteers to make it more consistent with how the roster list is displayed elsewhere throughout the app and current iOS patterns.
Part 2: Provide More Value to TeamSnap’s Users
A coach or manager does not need to assign someone to a particular assignment. They can leave it as “unassigned” and then a member of the team can volunteer for an unassigned task. Here we saw another chance to add a moment of delight to not only thank the user for volunteering, but for our partner to offer them a deal associated with that assignment.
This is great for the user because they get a deal for the product they just signed up to bring and great for the brand because they get more exposure.
Results & Next Steps
Within the first month of launching the redesigned Assignments feature, TeamSnap had already closed just under $1M in partnership deals associated with sponsored assignments. As the number of sponsored assignments that can be displayed at once is limited as to not overwhelm the user with too many options, in Q1 the partnerships team was able to sell out the spots for rest of the year
Originally Assignments was a paid feature, but with the tremendous success of sponsored assignments, we were able to make it free for all users giving more users access to a valuable and timesaving tool.
The next step is to increase usage of the assignments feature overall. Currently it is hard to find it within the app - many users don’t even know it’s there. By making it easier to find assignments within the app, we can make sure more of the coaches and managers that rely on TeamSnap know they have a simple way to delegate tasks right in the app. Plus, with more people using the feature it makes it an even more compelling case for brands to offer a sponsored assignment helping our partnership team negotiate better advertising deals.