Innovating sound wave art for the home

Product Overview

Background

SoundViz is a product where you can turn your favorite sound into sound wave art. You start by uploading any audio file such as your favorite song or your significant other saying “I love you." After uploading the file, you have the option to customize the sound wave’s shape, color and text to make it your own. Finally, you can order a digital download to print yourself or SoundViz will print and mail you your artwork.

Note: In June of 2018, SoundViz was acquired by Vilna Gaon with the intention of growing the SoundViz brand in Europe and abroad. Since then I have not had any affiliation with the company.

The Problem

Users didn’t have a song ready to upload

The sound wave editor was originally coded and designed by my husband who is a software engineer. He got an MVP out to prove the concept and quickly realized that users were not understanding how to use SoundViz. They were leaving once they navigated from the homepage to the editor. 

If users didn't have an audio file ready to upload then they didn't understand our value proposition that we are a DIY sound wave art product, which resulted in less signups and revenue. Because the design needed a major overhaul, I stepped in to redesign the entire shipped product that you see today.

The Solution

A pre-loaded song displayed so users understand our value proposition

Since 78% of users find us through a Google search for terms similar to "sound wave art," I wanted them to be able to play around with our product as quickly as possible. I simplified the experience into a step-by-step, intuitive flow that focuses the user's attention on one task at a time while visually communicating our value propositions immediately. 

The Before and After

Results

A huge win across the board!

• -65% bounce rate

• +15% ecommerce conversion rate

• +43% transactions

• +33% sign ups

• 43 to 66 NPS score

• Decrease in support emails and chats

My Process

Defining the problems

By hearing from customers through support requests (email, chat, NPS survey) and doing usability testing, I began to notice similar problems occurring.

1. There was a usability problem with the icons and navigation

Users were asking questions like “how do I add text to my print,” “how do I switch colors,” “how much does it cost” etc. Because the product alone should be answering these questions, it was obvious users weren't navigating the product as intended.

2. Users didn't know the types of audio files we could process

Certain companies, like Apple, place copyright protection on their digital media files which will prevent us from analyzing their files. This is called DRM, or digital rights management, and is a way to prevent unauthorized redistribution of digital media. If users had a file we couldn't process then they would get a very unhelpful error message. Just, SO BAD!

3. The business wasn't capturing enough email addresses

Since we required signup during checkout and most users weren't getting to this step, we were missing an opportunity to capture emails earlier in the funnel. More email addresses means more revenue for the business and we were missing out on re-marketing opportunities.

4. Bounce rate was high on the editor 

Visitors were bailing when they navigated to the editor from the homepage. Most users weren't ready to upload a sound or make a recording and wanted to see what SoundViz was all about first. 

Understanding my users

78% found us through an online search for "sound wave art"

Fun facts about our customers:

• Majority purchase gifts, especially for weddings, anniversaries and Christmas.

• Over 80% of recordings are people saying "I love you."

• 80% are under 34 years old.

Competitive analysis

Looking to other companies who make sound wave art

At the time of this redesign there were a few other companies making sound wave art, but none of them offered a DIY product like we did (Since then others have copied our approach). An example of this is Etsy where you work with an artist back and forth to create custom artwork. We wanted to let the user be the artist and believed this was how we were different in the market.

What does this mean for the design?

The design needs to communicate our competitive advantage

When users navigate to our website, most know what sound wave art is because they are searching those keywords in Google. Because of this, it was imperative to design a solution where users understand our competitive advantage—that we're the only innovative DIY sound wave product on the market.

Hypothesis

1. A better onboarding will lower bounce rates

Designing a step by step onboarding on how to use SoundViz will both educate and communicate our competitive advantage before users upload or record a sound. Doing so will lower bounce rates and increase conversion rates. 

2. Different tiers of usage will increase sign ups

Creating three tiers of usage should "cost" something and increase sign up and conversion rates. 

• FREE: Play around with our pre-loaded sound wave at no cost.

• EMAIL: Upload or record a sound to create your own sound wave for the price of an email address.

• MONEY: Order a digital download, print or canvas starting at $30.

Design ideas

Finding inspiration from other onboarding experiences

I looked to other companies who made complex processes more intuitive for their users. Turbo Tax made something as complicated as taxes easy for the average person to file. They focused on one decision per page which helped focus the users on one task. 

Canva prides themselves on being “the easiest to use design program in the world.” Artwork is big and bold on the right side and the design tools are displayed as navigation on the left, which is similar to other design tools people are familiar with such as Photoshop.

The design decisions

Each design decision mapped directly back to the user needs and business goals that I defined. Here's a little refresher of what I went over:

User Needs

• I want to be able to customize my sound wave

• I want to know what types of files I can upload

Next steps

Anticipate the user needs and prevent error messages from happening

Instead of having an error message show up after an audio file is uploaded, a better solution is to solve this within the interactions. The user should be able to confidently know what types of files we accept before uploading.

Use Spotify API to preview sound waves

Music services like Spotify offer an API where you can listen to 30 second previews of songs. Could we use that API to process sound waves and get users excited? A little hairy from a legal standpoint but something to research further for a better experience.

Reflections

Look to customer support teams for additional insights

By being on the front line of customer support, I learned how much I could care about each and every user's experience on my site. In future jobs I'm going to work closely with customer service teams because they know first-hand what can be improved in the product. Here's a Medium post I wrote about just this.

I 💗 My Customers