Unlocking Business Problems for New Market Expansion

Deep dive into customer behaviors, business challenges, and purchase decisions to inform a data-driven expansion strategy.

2024

B2B - market expansion - business challenges - user archetypes

Background:

To realize its vision for North American market expansion, the company aimed to build on its existing customer base and venture into the market’s untapped potential. However, assumptions about customer needs and challenges in this region were largely anecdotal and lacked robust, data-backed validation. This project was initiated to bridge this gap by uncovering actionable insights into customer behaviors, use patterns, and decision-making processes.

Approach:

The project was tackled through several phases:

Behavioral Analysis

Stakeholder workshops were conducted with different client-side teams to gather their input and to ensure they could voice their perspectives and align with the revamp objectives.

Product Focus

Performed a deep dive into the most-sold product in the North American market to understand business problems, use cases, and challenges. This step included user recruitment and interviews.

The Purchase Decision

Examined the buyer persona and analyzed win/loss reasons from historical commercial data to understand the factors influencing purchase decisions.

My Role:

  • Product Data Analysis:

    I planned and facilitated stakeholder workshops. These sessions aimed at ensuring various teams (beyond product) could voice their perspectives and align with the revamp objectives. The workshops were engaging by encouraging participants to write a Love Letter ❤️ Break-up Letter 💔 to the current product.

  • User Interviews:

    I set the overall research plan and methodology for the project, identifying its objectives and activities. I set the moderation guide for the focus group discussions. The research strategy was a twofold:

Primary research:

Focus Group Discussions

My role included moderating and synthesizing focus group discussions. Through focus group discussions, invaluable insights were garnered, laying the groundwork for the formation of distinct user personas. These personas, in turn, played a pivotal role in guiding the subsequent design phases.

Secondary research:

Data Analysis

To guide the primary research activities, I analyzed datasets provided by the client on their client base. This helped learn about the target user segments of SMEs in terms of: business activity, size and other information about the business. These details guided participant recruitment for a balanced representation.

  • User personas: The goal was to move from role-based personas into personas that demonstrate the differences in needs, contexts, and behaviors that are found across users that share the same role. I created 4 distinct user personas that is backed by evidence from the research activities. The personas described users motivations, objectives and goals.

Outcomes:

The research and discovery activities guided and influenced the design phase by:

  • Prioritize features and content of the portal dashboard to help users take the necessary actions related to their business at a timely manner.

  • Optimize the information architecture of the portal to match users expectations and beyond.

  • Facilitate the user journeys on the portal in a way that facilitates user business processes.