Defining AudioEye’s MVP

How I supported Sales with a demonstrative tool that presents the power of AudioEye’s services to potential clients.

Project Overview

My Role: Lead UX Designer

Duration: March 2021 - June 2021; Released August 2021

Tools: Pen & Paper, Figma, Zoom, Color Contrast Analyzer, Confluence

Summary: AudioEye is a SASS company that provides its customers with automated fixes for digital accessibility issues once installed on a website. Despite this mission, Sales could not effectively showcase the power of AudioEye’s technology. At large, AudioEye’s customers are non-technical, and often have difficulty understanding the product value because it operates invisibly. This project was an exploration to support Sales with a tool that helps sell AudioEye while leaving prospects with an understanding of digital accessibility. Over the course of three months, I spearheaded the user research and design of the Demo Kit. I collaborated with one other designer and worked alongside 3 Engineers, 1 Product Manager, and 1 Solutions Engineer. Through a mix of user interviews, iterative prototyping, and concept testing, my goal was to utilize an existing engineering project to deliver something valuable for AudioEye and future prospects.

🤔 The Challenge

Showcase the power of AudioEye’s technology as a valued product. 

AudioEye’s customers are largely non-technical, and often have difficulty understanding the value of a product that operates invisibly. The Sales team needed a demonstrative tool that would help non-technical prospects understand the power of AudioEye.

Kickoff

At the beginning of the project, I didn't have any specific goals on how to demonstrate AudioEye as a product. Without any pre-existing insights, I needed to explore how Sales currently sells AudioEye to prospective customers.

Early Insights

I interviewed 3 Sales representatives and requested each to perform a mock sales call as if I were an interested customer in need of accessibility solutions for my company’s website. My goals were to understand the challenges Sales faced when selling AudioEye’s product to customers and how they worked around it.

Observations found were, Sales:

• relied on presenting the AudioEye Toolbar on different client sites (which is not AudioEye’s valued product) for visual impact,

• assured clients on a future release of a reporting tool to address concerns and lack of visibility into the automated solutions, and

• required assistance from Solution Engineers to explain the technical bits of AudioEye’s automated solutions.

🧐 The Discovery

Sales needed a simpler, non-technical story. 

I wasn’t surprised that Sales faced some challenges relaying AudioEye’s product/services to the average inquiring customer because, to be frank, most people don’t think about digital accessibility — let alone, who it impacts and why it’s important.

After some thought, it became clear that the story must focus on educating prospects on accessibility, how it affects their customers, and how AudioEye mitigates accessibility issues on their websites.

Deeper Insights

Leveraging past projects to design something new. 

I was able to utilize an existing engineering project, known as the “Obstacle Course”, which was used to continuously test automated accessibility fixes the engineers were building. Through collaborations with the engineering team, I learned what automated accessibility fixes could be built out for a Sales demonstration.

Next, I partnered with a fellow designer, who is well-versed in digital accessibility, to learn what auto-fixes should be utilized for the Sales demo.

Defining the Ambiguous to Create the Obvious

Communicate AudioEye’s solution in a more intuitive way.

1. The Sales demonstration would mimic two identical-looking mock websites:

   • Site A: AudioEye not installed — sales relaying three found accessibility issues.

   • Site B: AudioEye installed — displaying the three accessibility issues fixed using automated solutions.

2. With the time constraints of Sales calls averaging 10–15 minutes, the demo needed to remain concise. Restricting the number of accessibility finds/fixes to three helped prospective customers quickly grasp the impact of digital accessibility. Chosen were three common accessibility issues that prevent end-users with disabilities from successfully finding content or completing actions (ordered from high to low impact):

   • (High) “Skip to content is not found” — making it difficult for some users with disabilities to navigate your page.

   • (Medium) “New window opens without warning” — making action and navigation difficult for users with disabilities.

   • (Low) “Image alt text with an associated link is redundant” — doesn’t make navigation or action difficult, but can make the experience of being on your site poor for users with disabilities.

3. My research also revealed that when Sales got to this stage during a prospect call they would defer to a Solutions Engineer to explain more in-depth. This stood out as a burden for both departments. A script would explain how AudioEye works and who it directly impacts, allowing Sales reps to sell AudioEye’s product confidently and independently.

Designing a Story to Reduce Ambiguity

The current Sales method did not help prospects understand how AudioEye can solve their accessibility problems and that services go beyond an overlay toolbar. We concluded that a demo presentation simulated as an eComm website would reduce the ambiguity of what AudioEye is and how it fixes accessibility problems on a customer’s site.

The flow, from Sales to prospects goes as followed:

1. Introduce AudioEye and its mission with accessibility and why it’s important: “AudioEye continuously monitors your site for accessibility issues. Accessibility issues are those that prevent users with disabilities from successfully finding content or completing actions. To illustrate how AudioEye works, we’ll show you 3 common accessibility issues and how AudioEye remediates them automatically.”

2. Opens Emeralds without AudioEye installed — Sales demonstrates the first frustrating experience due to an accessibility issue. Through this demonstration, Sales explains who this issue impacts and why it’s important to fix it.

3. Switches to Emeralds with AudioEye installed — Sales demonstrates how AudioEye automatically remediates the accessibility issue and what that experience looks like now.

This flow is repeated two more times finding and fixing the remaining accessibility issues.

Styling

I chose to design a retail store as the majority of Sale’s prospects come from eComm, which will deliver a more relatable story from the start. Since the priority was to demonstrate and educate prospects on accessibility issues, the styling was not the focus. However, to effectively support Sales the overall style was aimed to be clean and minimal so that it was quick to scan the page.

Testing & Iterations

In conjunction with the demo site, I tested the script for length, fluidity, clarity, and appeal on the Sales participants used in my discovery research.

Testing feedback: “With provided training on the accessibility solutions for the Sales team, Sales will find value in adopting this tool for their client demonstrations.”

After feedback, I collaborated with a Solution Engineer to clarify that all technical explanations for the accessibility solutions were accurate.

Finally, I revised where necessary with the support of my Product Design Team and Product Manager.

Once the script was finalized, Sales training followed. A Solutions Engineer and I hosted and trained three groups of seven on the demo and script. We explained its purpose and walked through the demo and supporting script. Throughout training I documented key takeaways as we requested feedback — The demo was well received by Sales but some recommendations were made to enhance the overall experience and drive impact to the client:

• “10–20 second screen recording using a screen reader for the invisible auto-solutions.” (Such as link alt text redundant and the link opens a new window without warning. ) — VP of Sales

• “Present developer tools and show the differences, though unlikely given the technical confidence of the sales folks.” — Product Manager

👏 Positive Results

The Sales demo was presented in AudioEye’s bi-weekly Tech Showcase. The company and stakeholders experienced the demo site with a brief summary of a simpler story and educational experience we hope to convey to all prospects moving forward.

One of the many well-received responses:

Next Steps

1. In addition to demonstrating AudioEye solutions, preparations should be made for the more technical and/or skeptical prospects, which are common; so I drafted a DevTool Cheatsheet. The goal of the cheat sheet is for Sales to follow the set of instructions, so if a prospect is familiar with dev tools and asks for more technical details beyond what was covered within the script they are fully equipped to do so.

2. In light of the VP of Sales’ feedback, a number of screen recordings using a screen reader for accessibility solutions will be completed by the Solution’s Engineers in the near future; however, it’s not a high priority as we’d like to avoid reliance on on-screen recordings as technical difficulties can arise at any time during a Sales call.

3. The highest priority: Sales adopts the demo kit and implements it, when necessary, during a Sales pitch for new prospects. Over time, inquiring with Sales on client feedback is essential for future iterations.

Learnings

• Time constraints kept the product lean to respect the Sales rep’s time for their average 15 min Sales pitch, while also remaining concise for the attention span of their prospects. This was very challenging but it taught me how to be a better UX writer.

• Leading the design for this project ultimately boosted my confidence in design thinking. Collaborating with engineers to acquire more in-depth accessibility practices… to conclusively train Sales was even more gratifying!

• Interviewing Sales representatives contributed a lot to my emotional investment towards the project. I was determined to see this project succeed, as I believed this demo was not only essential to our current Sales team but for future Sales candidates, marketing assets, and solutions, in which this can vastly expand.

🚀 Want to see it live?

Check out AudioEye’s blog, introducing a video series ‘Making Accessibility Visible’, to see my contributions.