DigitalFirst.ai
UX/UI improvements and AI feature development for Digital First AI — a marketing strategy platform with 3,000+ active users. Redesigned onboarding flow, fixed mobile experience, and integrated ChatGPT and Stability.ai to help marketers generate and execute strategies faster.
Project snapshot
Timeframe
Jan 2023
↓
Dec 2023
Goal
Reduce friction, ship mobile, integrate AI — make marketers self-sufficient.
Deliverables
↗ Onboarding flow redesign
↗ Mobile version audit + fixes
↗ Strategy Generator feature
↗ Marketing Assistant - ChatGPT integration
↗ Graphics Creator - Stability.ai integration
↗ Asset Library
↗ Connected Strategic Processes wizard
Toolchain
- Figma
- Clickup, Notion - project management
- Google Meets - interviews and testing
- Loom - recording UX sessions and user's feedback
My role
- Led UX sessions analyzing quantitative data and Growth Hacker community insights
- Conducted onboarding flow audit identifying 50% drop-off at pricing page
- Designed Strategy Generator — separate acquisition flow for new users
- Delivered mobile version audit with comprehensive UX/UI fixes
- Integrated ChatGPT as Marketing Assistant with prompt templates
- Created Graphics Creator using Stability.ai for visual asset generation
🌱 Discovery
The Chalenge
The founders, with extensive digital marketing expertise across strategy, communication, graphic assets, web development, media buying and analytics, saw how standard marketing practices, big agency dominance, and complex martech tools were overwhelming entrepreneurs.
Creating and delivering value to customers is challenging. 9 out of 10 startups fail, primarily due to a lack of product-market fit and marketing issues.
Moreover, 45% of companies lack a clear marketing strategy, as developing a smart advertising plan is both expensive and complex.
Project overview
Released version 1.0 of DigitalFirst had over 3,000 accounts, with most being active users. The platform's users are split between company strategists (53%) and individual client consultants (47%), primarily consisting of business owners, marketing managers, and growth hackers.
Through quantitative data analysis and gathering insights from discussions with Growth Hackers, I formed recommended next steps during UX sessions.
I noticed many inconsistencies in the UI. This was caused by implementing the TaigaUI v2 framework, which was itself confusing to use in product development. I recommended using more common solutions like AntDesign or TailwindUI, but this was quite challenging at that moment.
✨ Ideation and Execution
Planning
The DigitalFirst’s growth scope was constantly evolving caused the rapidly expanding market of AI tools.
Besides user feedback, the general direction was to explore multiple integrations for communication, content creation, web development, analytics, and more. This exploration aimed to deliver valuable features for creating a self-sufficient and independent marketing tool.
This led to systematic planning sessions and extensive workshop meetings. A community of Growth Hacker users actively using DF also provided us with valuable qualitative insights. As a result, we brainstormed numerous flows and wireframes, which we iteratively analyzed until we had a clarified concept ready for design or implementation.
Goals
refine new user onboarding,
create value-driven engagement to showcase product capabilities,
deliver a fully functional mobile version,
improve content creation,
enhance business canvases for better precision,
implement graphic assets generation,
add landing page generation,
focus user attention on daily marketing actions.
Improvements
First-time user experience
After analyzing and testing the onboarding flow, I identified several key issues:
Approx 50% of users visiting the pricing page during the sign-up process completed their registration,
New users faced too complex onboarding without a clear product’s purpose,
The flow was non-linear, guiding users through features without proper context,
Non-functional mobile version.
Based on these findings, I presented the following recommendations to the product team:
Simplify onboarding by replacing the complex wizard with a simple setup flow and include the video that already existed in promotional resources.
Implement a reverse trial. Unlock all features of DF for a limited time, including the onboarding video as well.
Create a Strategy Generator. Instead of giving immediate access to DF, I prepared a separate flow allowing new users to generate valuable data related to their goals.
Initially, we decided to move forward with this solution, but it was further expanded into a new feature called "Connected strategic processes."
Mobile version audit
The mobile version had numerous issues. Some screens lacked responsiveness entirely, displaying the desktop version instead.
I conducted an audit and recommended several UX and UI improvements and fixes to deliver an accessible mobile version.
Dashboard refinement
The current layout presented a general action center with shortcuts already available in the sidebar.
I presented a PoC of a better overview of daily tasks, activities, and tactics execution tracking.
New features and integrations
ChatGPT
Integration with ChatGPT for contextual purposes. The unexpected release of GPT-4 in March 2023 compelled us to maximize the potential of the new version.
We implemented ChatGPT as a separate functionality and developed a Marketing Assistant - an enhanced Content Generator with a templates library and prompt source code allowing users to refine generated content with GPT for more precise outputs.
Strategic Hub
Concept of simplifying marketing campaigns by integrating all features into a linear flow. A step-by-step process from general canvases to producing assets for specific activities.
However, it was postponed during internal testing due to its complexity and the many steps required to receive output.
Graphics Creator
Integration with stability.ai to enable graphic asset generation.
I presented a simplified approach to graphics generation. As a result, we implemented a Graphics Creator feature to generate visual assets for specific marketing tactics or other purposes.
Landing Page Builder
This feature would provide significant value to users by allowing them to build pages tailored for specific campaigns like lead generation, promotions, event registration, and product launches.
I prepared a PoC, but implementation has been postponed for delivery in version 2.0 due to unresolved issues including integrations, domain connections, and hosting options.
Connected Strategic Processes
An evolution of the previously created Strategy Generator.
We created an automated wizard with a linear flow to generate a marketing strategy in minutes. The output includes business canvases, communication strategy, campaign key messages, target audience, marketing channels and tactics, content strategy plan, and campaign execution.
Designs
A showcase of the 21st interface, highlighting its key features and overall aesthetic.
Outcome
Delivered comprehensive UX/UI improvements across the platform: redesigned onboarding flow, fully responsive mobile version, and four new AI-powered features (Marketing Assistant, Graphics Creator, Asset Library, Connected Strategic Processes). The Strategy Generator became core acquisition tool, later evolving into Connected Strategic Processes wizard.
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