cover for self-service experience project

Self-Service Experience (Product-Led Growth)

To reinforce our sales outreach process, I designed a self-service experience to drive new sales without needing an assigned rep, allowing our sales team to focus on pursuing higher ARR clients, and create a new stream of qualified leads for our SDRs to follow up with.

PROJECT FOR

ThankView

Timeframe

August 2021 - December 2021

Role

Lead UI/UX, Design Facilitation & Management, Strategy

Team

1 Product Manager, 2 Designers, 3 Developers, 1 Project Manager, various cross-functional teammates

Project Synopsis

Saved searches are one of CompStak’s most valuable features—both for users and for the business. They eliminate repetitive query-building, accelerate workflows, and allow users to easily monitor trends in their focused sector. They also serve as a major engagement driver for the business—bringing users back through email alerts, strengthening platform stickiness, and reinforcing CompStak’s role in daily workflows.

Before the redesign, the saved search feature was difficult to find, weekly email alerts often arrived too late, and users struggled to identify what information was truly new in a list of hundreds of comps. As a result, the feature underperformed despite its strategic importance based on conversations during user interviews.

I led the redesign of the saved-search experience to address these gaps. The new saved search solution improved visibility and workflow integration, and customizable alert cadences—including immediate notifications, daily summaries, and weekly digests. Through iterative testing, we ensured users could quickly spot new activity, trust the updates, and manage alerts in a way that fit their prospecting cadence and client workflows.CompStak is known in the Commercial Real Estate industry to be the primary source for office leases in the United States, with a heavy presence in primary markets such as New York City and San Francisco. COVID shifted the industry’s demand from office leases in primary markets to industrial leases across primary and secondary markets. This shift in demand revealed key challenges:

Key Outcomes & Business Impact

Project Synopsis

Saved searches are one of CompStak’s most valuable features—both for users and for the business. They eliminate repetitive query-building, accelerate workflows, and allow users to easily monitor trends in their focused sector. They also serve as a major engagement driver for the business—bringing users back through email alerts, strengthening platform stickiness, and reinforcing CompStak’s role in daily workflows.

Before the redesign, the saved search feature was difficult to find, weekly email alerts often arrived too late, and users struggled to identify what information was truly new in a list of hundreds of comps. As a result, the feature underperformed despite its strategic importance based on conversations during user interviews.

I led the redesign of the saved-search experience to address these gaps. The new saved search solution improved visibility and workflow integration, and customizable alert cadences—including immediate notifications, daily summaries, and weekly digests. Through iterative testing, we ensured users could quickly spot new activity, trust the updates, and manage alerts in a way that fit their prospecting cadence and client workflows.CompStak is known in the Commercial Real Estate industry to be the primary source for office leases in the United States, with a heavy presence in primary markets such as New York City and San Francisco. COVID shifted the industry’s demand from office leases in primary markets to industrial leases across primary and secondary markets. This shift in demand revealed key challenges:

Key Outcomes & Business Impact

Assisting the Sales Funnel

As a growing organization, how do we scale our business while not burning out our team? After discussions with our Director of Product and Product Manager, we determined that the most effective approach was to build a self-service experience (sometimes referred to as Product-Led Growth [PLG]). PLG would:

  • Minimize Friction - allowing the user to learn and use ThankView's product more efficiently by eliminating unnecessary steps to purchase and upgrade packages, contact bundles and add-ons.
  • Increase Sales Efficiency - allowing the product the ability to convert without requiring a human so that other departments can focus on more valuable tasks/prospects
  • Automate Conversions - allowing the ability to purchase within the platform, the product will be able to convert users at a quicker rate.

PLG's intention is not to automate our sales team out of a job. Instead, PLG assists our team in selling ThankView by providing them another method to showcase the product without the need to be present in the experience.

plg impact on sales funnel
Our self-service model helps automate part of the sales funnel that would originally require a representative to directly lead over 3 months.

The Three Phase Approach

We tackled the project in three phases across multiple sprints to give our team time to build the platform out and gather data/feedback simultaneously while developing the next phase. Through market research and in-depth discussions with cross-functional teams, we determined that these phases would be the ideal starting point to create a self-service experience:

  • 14-Day Free Trial (with the ability to upgrade to a 30-Day Free Trial)
  • Self Checkout
  • Upsells and Upgrades

14-Day Free Trial

A ThankView campaign on average takes about 7 days to get 95%+ of its performance metrics. Including the time to learn the platform, send a campaign, and analyze metrics, we determined that 14 days was the optimal amount of time for a user to make a decision on ThankView as a platform. If the user determined 14 days wasn’t enough to make a decision, the user could extend their trial to 30 days (an additional 16 days) to continue utilizing the platform.

In the free trial, users had access to a combination of features across multiple plan tiers. This allowed users to experience a fuller version of ThankView before determining which package suited their needs the most, instead of just guessing what they wanted based on descriptions. To track how we could optimize our free trial experience, we worked with our data team to put tracking markers on:

  • When a user drops off before completing their free trial sign up - see where the flow could be improved
  • Number of campaigns created - does the number of campaigns created impact their chance to convert
  • Type of campaigns created - what is the main reason a user wants ThankView for
  • Average time spent in free trial - does the time on platform impact their ability to convert
  • Features being used most often - what features should we focus on to improve the overall ThankView experience
Setup free trial page with input fields and image of Lynne Wester

Project Synopsis

Saved searches are one of CompStak’s most valuable features—both for users and for the business. They eliminate repetitive query-building, accelerate workflows, and allow users to easily monitor trends in their focused sector. They also serve as a major engagement driver for the business—bringing users back through email alerts, strengthening platform stickiness, and reinforcing CompStak’s role in daily workflows.

Before the redesign, the saved search feature was difficult to find, weekly email alerts often arrived too late, and users struggled to identify what information was truly new in a list of hundreds of comps. As a result, the feature underperformed despite its strategic importance based on conversations during user interviews.

I led the redesign of the saved-search experience to address these gaps. The new saved search solution improved visibility and workflow integration, and customizable alert cadences—including immediate notifications, daily summaries, and weekly digests. Through iterative testing, we ensured users could quickly spot new activity, trust the updates, and manage alerts in a way that fit their prospecting cadence and client workflows.CompStak is known in the Commercial Real Estate industry to be the primary source for office leases in the United States, with a heavy presence in primary markets such as New York City and San Francisco. COVID shifted the industry’s demand from office leases in primary markets to industrial leases across primary and secondary markets. This shift in demand revealed key challenges:

Key Outcomes & Business Impact

  • Over 50% increase in monthly saved-search creation following launch, validating improved usability and visibility.
  • 80% uplift in user engagement through more frequent alerts and easier access to updated information.
  • 50% increase in user retention and account retention, including helping save one of our most critical high–six-figure accounts directly tied to the enhanced alert experience.
  • 15% increase in decision-making time, as users can set to receive timely and clearly labeled updates (immediate, daily, or weekly).
  • Strengthened platform stickiness, positioning CompStak as a daily operational tool rather than a periodic research destination.

Self Checkout

In the first iteration of the Free Trial, the user weren't able convert to a paid plan unless a Sales person reached out to them. To reduce the strain on our Sales team to follow up to close the loop on a prospect, we built out the Self Checkout flow that allowed users to purchase ThankView on their own.

  • Credit card checkout - we utilized the Stripe API to verify and accept payment for ThankView
  • Buy anytime - user can checkout anytime throughout their free trial in the settings page
  • Credit card requirements behind 30 day free trial - users were required to add a credit card to extend their free trial to 30 days
Page where user can choose their package and contacts
A payment page
Page when user completes free trial set up with Uni head on Vin Diesel
Image shows a section of the campaign builder, with a tag that allows users to purchase a larger package

Upsells and Upgrades

After building the self checkout, I brought on our amazing designer, Samantha Tan, to tackle upsells and upgrades on the platform.

During this time, I worked with the PM as the bridge between Product and other departments to study the impact of PLG and determine necessary iterations.

    Data-Driven Iterations

    After launching PLG in December 2021, we gathered data to figure out how we could improve the experience to convert more users:

    Results

    Building meaningful and actionable dashboards is a non-stop endeavor. As we expand our metrics capabilities, we look to continue adding value to the dashboards we build. In our backlog, we currently have the features planned:

    Generated 30% conversions to a paid subscription with individual contract values over $5k in 3 months
    Saved our team more time to focus on larger clients, allowing them to extend their total ARR by 15%
    Client satisfaction rate responded with NPS of +67
    2022 benchmark for SaaS products is +40