Instagram Pro:Adding Professional Freelancer Features to Instagram
Instagram has seen the growth of freelancers on their platform and seeks to develop new features on their platform to empower users that use Instagram as a platform for their personal business and hobbies by leveraging their already existing shop and cart features and adding more flexibility for service oriented professionals.
Problem
Freelancers face a mulititude of frustrations when handling their day-to-day operations. According to Timelyapp.com & Remotebliss.com, finding clients is the number one issue that freelancers face. Without enough clients, freelancers struggle to make enough income to make ends meet, which can lead to increased stress that can affect their mental health and overall work performance.
Solution
Following my research, I decided to design additional tools built into the existing Instagram ad tools that allow freelancers to set more specific goals, customize their CTAs for a more personal touch, and target specific industries to market to. While adding new tools, I also decided to update the existing tool tips so that they would be more accessible and descriptive.
Year Completed
2022
Role
UX designer responsible for all research, visual design, prototyping, and testing
Tools Used
Figma, Notion, Google Forms, Zoom
Methodologies Used
User Survey, User Interviews, User Persona, User Journey Map, Competitive Analysis, Secondary Research, User Flows, Sketching, Feature roadmap, High Fidelity Prototypes, Usability Testing
Meet Emma
Like many freelance creative professionals, Emma has a lot on her plate. She’s been working full-time while trying to grow her freelance business with the hopes of going completely freelance at some point. She has a lot of decisions to make about how and where to show her work, how to find new clients, and how to manage and market her business to name just a few.
“I’ve been working on growing my freelance business for a couple of years now and I’m always looking for new and easy ways to promote my work and attract new clients.”
Research
Secondary Research & Competitive Analysis
Key Takeaways
One
Current seller solutions for social media focus on selling products rather than services, leaving room for Instagram to differentiate and expand their seller features to include professional services.
Two
All seller features on major social media platforms require the seller to also host their products on their own website through an existing e-commerce solution. Instagram has an opportunity to simplify this process for their users.
Three
All products researched require the user to use the website to go through the store setup process. Building the seller features for mobile first will reduce friction for the sellers and allow them to manage everything from one place.
Four
While Fiverr. and Upwork have many features targeted to selling services, they lack social features that help sellers grow their network and advertise their work to a broad audience.
User Survey
A user survey was done to gain some general demographic data about the freelancing community as well as some insights into the platforms freelancers use and their overall motivation for freelancing.
User Interviews
I chose to interview freelancing professionals with experience in marketing themselves online as well as the use of freelancing platforms. Interviewees varied in age, occupation, and location. Interview questions aimed to understand freelancing habits and tools, frustrations with their current methods of securing and managing freelance contracts, and social media use related to their freelance business.
Needs
100%
indicated they use email as the main form of communication with clients
indicated they received some payments in the form of physical checks
80%
indicated use of social media in some form to market their work and find new clients and find it very important to have an easy way to show their work that can reach a broad audience
indicated they use some sort of digital payment method like paypal & venmo to receive payments
60%
indicated use of some sort of video conferencing to communicate with clients
Frustrations
100%
Knowing how and where to market themselves can be difficult.
80%
Managing schedules between clients is difficult and requires monitoring of many email threads
60%
No services exist where they can display their work, handle marketing, scheduling, and the business of their freelance work in the same place.
Finding clients that are a good fit is difficult and requires spending a lot of time communicating before knowing
20%
On some freelancing platforms, it’s hard to know for certain if a contract is a scam or not.
User Journey Map & Persona
To get a better understanding of my user’s needs and frustrations, I did a journey map focused on a budding freelancer securing their first paid client.
Problem Statement
Freelancers face a multitude of frustrations when handling their day-to-day operations. Finding clients is the one of the main issues that freelancers face. Without enough clients, freelancers struggle to make enough income to make ends meet, which can lead to increased stress that can affect their mental health and overall work performance.
Designing Solutions
Solution
Following my research, I decided to design additional tools built into the existing Instagram ad tools that allow freelancers to set more specific goals, customize their CTAs for a more personal touch, and target specific industries to market to. While adding new tools, I also decided to update the existing tool tips so that they would be more accessible and descriptive.
User Flows
I created several user flows for common tasks that PRO users and regular users might perform. It was clear from my user flows that it would make sense to leverage the existing flows that users already know and use with only minor tweaks to the design and added screens where needed to incorporate new features.
Sketching Solutions
Since I was building a feature to add into Instagram, I chose to use as much of Instagram’s existing design as possible because users were familiar with the existing design and to decrease the amount of time it would take to develop and implement.
Feature Roadmap
I created a feature roadmap to guide the focus on what features made sense to be implemented first. The roadmap included the phases each feature would be developed in as well as the research supporting each feature and how it related back to the problem statement.
The Prototype
Testing
Usability Testing
Usability tests were performed with users with experience freelancing and using Instagram. Usability tests were moderated over Zoom. Users were asked to test 2 different scenarios.
Scenario 1 - Regular User
Find a PRO user in your feed and tell me about their availability and services offered. Find the PRO user portfolio
Scenario 2 - PRO User
Find the professional dashboard. Create an ad with specific settings: more portfolio visits, custom CTA, industry audience.
Successes
100%
were able complete both scenarios without major issue
found the PRO user in their feed
found availability and services on the PRO profile
liked the CTA customization
Challenges
66%
had issues finding the portfolio in the PRO profile
mixed up the words “profile” and “portfolio” when selecting a goal
33%
had some issue finding the professional dashboard
had confusion on the “choose what to market” screen
hesitated when locating the PRO tag in the user feed
Revisions
Conclusion
Next Steps
Further usability testing of the updated Ad features to ensure users are easily able to create the ads they would like.
Explore more ad options for PRO users. Scheduling, more detailed audience tools?
Design, prototyping, and testing of the additional PRO features
What I Learned
Project scopes can change over time.
After my initial research was done, it was clear that the task of adding a full set of professional features to Instagram would be a monumental task. I decided to focus my efforts on features that would have the biggest impact in the time allotted for the project based on data from my user interviews.
