The launch of the DSP service was the most important project for the Aparat service in 2021 and 2022. It allows businesses and individuals to distribute their advertisements across the platform automatically. Exactly like Twitter Ads, Facebook Ads, and even YouTube Ads.
My role:
My responsibilities as Head of the Product Design team include:
Contributing to the design of all pages and helping colleagues with their designs
Solving design problems and challenges
Holding product design team meeting every other day
Having Data-driven designs
Maintaining the user interface and design flow integrated
Focusing on data and user testing results
Designing some of the critical pages
Problem:
While Aparat receives more than 60 million monthly visits, up to 70% of its advertisements positions were not being sold and the sales of Aparat advertisements were handled by another platform "SabaVision", which had serious user experience issues and users could not create an ad campaign automatically with that.Due to this, the advertisements displayed in "Aparat" included only large businesses that had been signed through face-to-face contracts and not online! In this platform, The user had to go through a very long process to create an ad (almost 11 steps)! A very high bounce rate was caused by this long process and funnel.Take a look at its funnel below:
This lengthy and tedious process resulted in a very low 1.2% conversion rate and the only advertisements displayed on "Aparat" came from face-to-face contracts with large businesses!
Goal:
As a result, as we all know, a product needs to grow and increase its revenue continuously to survive, and with that in mind, we decided to launch the Aparat "DSP" service (Demand-side platform) that will allow users to set up and run ads directly from the Aparat website, without needing to go through a third-party platform.Among the most important goals of launching this service are:
Filling all the advertising positions of Aparat
Attracting Small and medium-sized enterprises to create its ads on Aparat
It was clear that all advertising positions could be filled, once we make it easy for individuals, small and medium-sized enterprises to build their own advertising campaigns on Aparat at an affordable cost. SMEs are attracted to Aparat DSP when self-service is available to them, and they'll be able to choose the ad type they want and the price per view.(One of the many differences between large and small businesses should not be forgotten is that large businesses have a much higher payment capacity, and to attract small and medium businesses, conditions need to be created in the "Aparat" of ads, that businesses with low payment capacity can also use this service.)In order to accomplish this, we came up with a solution: * Making changes to the method and algorithm of selling advertising positions (so that users pay a certain amount for each ad view, not large contracts with predetermined amounts)I mentioned the following to the team members as the most important considerations for this service:
Choosing the right pricing algorithm
Making ads easier to create (creating ads with fewer clicks)
Research:
The First phase of research:
As soon as the problem and objectives of the project were determined, I assigned the team members the task of researching advertising pricing algorithms for various products. Since this phase was extremely important for us, I devoted a lot of time to it. To find the best algorithm and system for selling advertising positions, we spent about 3-4 months researching.As a result of these several months of research, theBidding method was chosen for the DSP service.
Bidding Ad auction
By using this method, low-cost advertisers can publish their ads on Aparat, a method that reconciles small and medium businesses by creating an ad on Aparat (due to its cost-effectiveness). The system charge advertisers based on the number of actual video ad views, while on the other hand, it offered advertisers the option to target keywords, geographical areas, and categories on ads in order to create targeted advertisements and deliver them to the target audience. Also, since targeted ads require more effort to deliver, they cost more per view than non-targeted ads. Another benefit of the Bidding method of service is the ability to create competition on a keyword:since in this method, the advertiser himself sets the cost of each true view of his ad, if several advertisers advertise on a specific keyword, for example, "mobile", the one that has set a higher cost for each view of its ad will be (winner) displayed first!Definitely, the Aparat platform benefits from this competition for the ad's price and placement.
The Second phase of research:
Our second phase of research focused on Sabavision (the exclusive operator of "Aparat" advertising sales). It was noted in the problem definition phase that Sabavision's dashboard and online services had severe technical and user experience problems, which forced many users to abandon their attempts to create an ad. (Especially when they see an 11-step funnel for creating an ad!)By examining more closely the Creating Ads flow in the Sabavision service, we found many redundant steps, too many options, and required fields that, if removed, would have no effect on the process.In this phase, in order to identify more users' pain points and conduct guess-less decisions, we created a usability test by our "User Research" team and we asked 5 users to create their desired ad in "Aparat" with the "Sabavision" dashboard.The results were horrible, with almost no participant completing the task.
Usability task 1
However, we discovered some interesting things from this test, including identifying the users' pain points, as well as items that were important to them but were not visible in the panel, or, on the other hand, items that users did not need, like the presence of several levels and steps to create an ad. (Just as there are several levels and branches to creating an ad: campaign -> program -> ad -> type of ad.)
Design:
It started by considering the negatives and positives of the previous advertising platform "SabaVision" as well as the successful experience of Twitter Ads, YouTube Ads, and Google Ads.For each section, product designers created a variety of sketches until we achieved the results we wanted. Using the Component Base design system, designers integrated approved sketches into Figma.Since every advertising service must have some pages to provide ads statistics, ads management, ads creation, wallet balance, and so forth, we made the DSP dashboard separate from the "Aparat" video management dashboard. So, to access these pages, the user must first enter the "DSP" dashboard.These pages were also present in the previous dashboard "Sabavision", but the information architecture, navigation, and information on each page were unsuitable!
Next, let's look at the design of the DSP dashboard pages:
Ad Creation:
After holding various meetings with the team members, we were able to implement this funnel in three simple steps by focusing on simplicity and convenience. Yes! The Creation Ad funnel was reduced from 11 steps to 3 steps!
In the first step, the user selects the type of advertisement he wants (in stream or discovery) with just one click.
In the second step, the user chooses the desired advertising video to be promoted on the "Aparat" platform and also determines whether the ad is targeted or not in this step.
In the third step, the user only needs to consider the overall budget for his ad as well as the cost of each display. then he can set some restrictions on his ad display.
The ad is then easily registered and promoted on the Aparat video sharing platform…
Overview:
In all dashboards, it is very important to have an overview page, Usually, on this page, you should provide general, useful, and brief information that gives the user a good view of the status of his dashboard.On this page, I presented the general statistics and the number of ads users have, as well as a large graph to show the ads status. Two announcement boxes are located at the bottom of the page, displaying the contents, news, and updates of the DSP dashboard, Making it easier and more accessible to its users.
Moreover, considering my studies about how important are empty pages, I designed an empty pages for overview, which has a strong CTA “creating ad” on it. so that users are able to going through the creating ads process instead of watching empty diagram!
Ads Management:
An important point that we discussed in this section was the different architecture and sort of input fields in the Edit Ads funnel compared to Creating Ads funnel.In other words, in Creatig Ad form, in the third step, the user specified the cost of each ad view, However, in Editing Ad form, this field is the first field that users see when editing their ad, as according to our research, users of advertising services (marketers) typically go to the Edit Ad page to adjust their prices.
Ad Statistic page:
To measure the performance of each ad, we presented the following important metrics on this page that we found during our research and discussions with marketers:
Ad view rate
Click rate
Ad win and loss rate (Loose CNT)
Keyword analysis(The performance of each keyword for ads targeted at one or more keywords)
Spent budget
And…
Wallet:
It's a financial and advertising service, so users must charge their accounts for their ads. Thus, it is crucial to have a page for increasing credit and viewing invoices and payments.
Result:
After launching the entire DSP dashboard and fixing its bugs, we collected the dashboard data from the performance team, which fully indicated the growth and development of the service, compared to the previous dashboard "Sabavision".
The conversion rate of the "Creating Ad" funnel increased by over 8X!
The conversion rate by each ad type submitted was 20% for Discovery Ads, and 15.5% for In-Stream Ads.
Optimizing funnel from 11 to only 3 steps!
&...
Several usability tests, AB tests, multivariable tests, etc. have been conducted on this service, which has resulted in continuous improvement
After more than seven years of designing, improving, and optimizing digital products, I decided to seek new experiences and prepare myself for international challenges.
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