HubSpot Sales Analytics
A curated reporting app prioritized for sales managers.
Overview
Sales managers use reporting to coach their reps, track deal pipelines, and analyze sales outcomes. Without in-depth reporting, sales managers don’t know when to help their reps, intervene in a stalled deal, or identify when their monthly targets are at risk. HubSpot lacked a solution at that time, forcing users to rely on Excel and external software to build custom reports – a timely and cumbersome process.
My roles
For this project I was the lead designer and assumed the roles of:
User Researcher
UX Designer
Interaction Designer
Deliverables
Competitive research
User surveys
Shadowing
Low fidelity wireframes and prototype
User testing and findings
High fidelity prototypes
Future vision
Project specifications
Duration: 9 months
Tools used:
Sketch
InVision
Survey Monkey
In-app surveys
LiveCharts
Opportunity
While reviewing NPS and summaries of sales calls, we learned that a major reason for customer churn and a blocker for net new sales was the lack of reporting for sales managers.
The reporting needs for sales managers is more complex and varied than reps. While reps have personal monthly goals, managers are tracking progress across individuals, teams, pipelines, regions, and previous time periods. To continue gaining traction for HubSpot’s relatively new Sales product, we needed to expand HubSpot’s offerings beyond the rep role.
Proposed solution
Curated, out-of-the-box reports so sales manager users feel HubSpot is made for them.
Exclusive sales manager content such a pipeline reporting and deal velocity.
Enough content and flexibility so sales managers can stop using excel, google sheets, and 3rd party software.
Design approach
Start with most high priority reports and build features out based on user feedback.
Prioritize a no work approach, meaning our out of the box reports need little intervention for insights.
Create a new reporting app without being tied to historical reporting designs.
Simplify complexity.
Research
Surveys
I launched surveys through HubSpot.com to understand what metrics and reports are most important to users, so I could prioritize them.
Foundational research
I spoke to 7 companies on Zoom to gain a foundational understanding of sales manager’s priorities and duties. I also wanted to understand what the biggest usability gaps and pain points existed in their current reporting processes.
On site research
I shadowed 2 HubSpot sales managers to understand how they used HubSpot reporting throughout their day and how they used reports when working with their sales reps.
Alpha
Based on what I learned, I designed a barebones app with just 7 of the most important reports. This served as our Alpha.
I used an existing report layout in HubSpot with no new custom functionality to build it as quickly as possible.
Our product team partnered with 5 companies who we spoke to monthly for continuous feedback.
Beta
For the beta, we continued to offer more reports based on the feedback we received.
As the app became more data dense, I started exploring with filters. Sales managers most often mentioned wanting to filter by region, time, sales rep/team, and pipeline.
I also started exploring with ‘different slices’ of the data, such as total vs overtime. I predicted different views of the same data would help with comprehension and save time on filtering.
What we learned
From the usability testing I conducted during the beta period, we learned:
All sales managers needed time to digest and understand the reports. Even managers with many years of reporting experience found the reports to be overwhelming and complex.
Sales managers need to see where the data is being aggregated from to trust the reports.
A significant insight for managers was to know what changed since ‘xx’? – the last week, last month, last time the app was opened, etc. A current workaround for this was taking a lot of screenshots.
Managers wanted more customizations so the reports accurately reflected their organizations– such as customizing calendar year, subscription deal types, team structures.
Final Product
1. We launched Sales Analytics with 22 new reports organized by sales manager’s highest priorities: coach reps, track pipelines, and measure sales outcomes.
2. I tabbed out reports with preselected filters to offer curated, out-of-the-box-options.
3. To minimize information overload I nested most filters in a closeable side panel.
4. We introduced Summary Metrics at the top of each report. It provides users with immediate insights into the key takeaways and recent changes in metrics.
5. To increase customer trust, we provided an in-depth About the report section that includes:
Summary of what customers will learn in ‘non-data’ speak.
Key metrics that are being measured and where those metrics are being pulled from across HubSpot.
Definitions of key terms.
Outcomes
Sales Analytics was announced at INBOUND Conference 2020 and became the 2nd most used reporting tool within the first quarter of launch.
Increased overall reporting usage by 11% within first quarter of launch
Became core offering of Sales Hub Enterprise
The design of Sales Analytics became the standard layout for analytics tools.