Use human language to build and manage segments
Segments are groups of subscribers who share common characteristics, like their location or purchase history. Marketers use segments to send targeted messages.
Building and maintaining segments can be complex. Some platforms use confusing boolean operators, but we wanted the segment builder to read like a sentence. I worked closely with two product designers and my fellow content strategist to create a more human-friendly segmentation feature.
Summary
Audience
Marketers using the Attentive platform
Challenge
Simplify a highly technical feature
Solution
Structure the information like a sentence; explain the feature in concise tooltips
My process
Learn
I joined this project after the initial research and ideation had started. I had to quickly get to know the segment builder so that I could make meaningful improvements. My team was a huge asset in getting me up to speed. I also experimented with segment builder myself (who knew you could get so many different file upload errors?!) so that I could get a sense of the pain points for a new user.
Collaborate
Over the course of multiple weeks, I worked with the product designers during content strategy office hours and asynchronously on Figma and Notion. A lot of our time was spent deciding on the exact wording for each condition's name and description. At times, we had to delve into Shopify's developer docs for inspiration.
One challenge we ran into was the character limit for each condition's name. Sometimes the name that made the most sense didn't fit on one line, so we had to rethink it. Another challenge was naming the three main condition categories. Each category contains many different conditions, so it was difficult to find a name that clearly encompassed all of them. We decided on "A subscriber's activity", "A subscriber's characteristics", and "The segment a subscriber is in."
Once users build a segment, they can view and manage it on an insights page. We wanted experienced users to be able to get a sense of their segment at a glance, while providing more support for new users. We decided to use tooltips—rather than descriptive subheadings or linking to help docs—to explain each concept.
How and when segments are updated is crucial information for users. For each segment type, we added a tooltip explaining how they're updated.
Klaviyo is a popular marketing platform that also has a segmentation feature. Marketers can sync their Klaviyo segments with Attentive. For Klaviyo integrations, I had to articulate the difference between the people who are members of the Klaviyo segment—called "profiles"—versus people who have subscribed to Attentive texts.
Finally, we had to account for stress cases and clarify how segments are calculated.
Wrap up
We probably could have spent weeks going back and forth on the naming conventions for segment conditions. Once we reached the point where segments were clear, content strategy and product design completed a final review. We worked with product marketing, product management, and technical writing to make sure that everything was good to go, and then handed our work off to the engineers.
Outcome
The new segment builder launch received great enthusiasm from internal stakeholders and customers. It received positive feedback for matching users' mental models and providing better transparency and clarity about how segments work. As tricky as this project was, seeing it launch was so rewarding!