Startup service for local governments in SaaS
UX / UI Design which draws the user in and helps them understand difficult financial documents - a city budget resolution.
Redesign SaaS
In cooperation with municipalities and cities, we have created a web application that talks about the city's budget in an engaging way for its residents. Our task was to completely refresh the website based on the 2012 version.
Increasing profits and reducing SaaS operating costs
Thanks to our efforts, this service has become a leader in the budget presentation segment as a product for public administration. This achievement was the result of insights into business goals vs user needs and the implementation of the principles of sales funnel design and lean management.
>250%
Increase in product sales to cities and municipalities
nr 1
Ranking first in the segment of services for local governments
>75%
Achieved customer retention level
from 10 days to 4 hours
Shortening the time needed to perform both budget analysis and presentation
Product Design for public administration
Presenting over 100 pages of the budget resolution in an interactive form required us to analyze various aspects of public finances - laws, rules for financing public expenditure, rules for allocating budget revenues, and rules for village funds.
Product personalization - adjusting the budget presentation to fit the visual identity of the city
Through SaaS redesign, we conducted in-depth interviews with local government officials. The result was, among others, introducing the possibility of adapting the appearance of the budget presentation to the visual identity of the cities.
Thanks to this, public relations departments see a greater value in the service and use it for promotional purposes, and fiscal campaigns to encourage residents to pay taxes.
Visual system
The process of designing the web application interface (UI) facilitated the creation of an icon system. Each contains a scene from an event in the city that is financed from the commune's resources.
Combining the scenes together led to the creation of visualization and presentation of the city which reflects its life, daily income and budget. Elements of these illustrations also served as a leitmotif consistently used in product communication.
Interactive design
Mobile and interactive elements which are implemented in every visualization of the city or commune budget draw users' attention to key elements of the presentation. As a result, they engage with the content of the presentation and better understand its meaning. Interaction design in a digital product directly affects the building of user experience (UX / UI Design).
Design challenges
Analysis of the product idea and competition testing showed that with appropriate modification of the business model and best practice within the scope of UX (building positive customer experience throughout the service process), Nacoidamojepieniadze.pl can be a leader in its niche.
We knew that our product should yield an increase in SaaS profits, so during the design process, each assumption was verified with the question: "Will this lead to an increase in added value?"
We started our work by performing a UX audit, testing the product and the process of providing the service on the former platform and conducting workshops with decision makers.
At the workshops, we talked about key success factors, motivations, and entry barriers. In this way, basic assumptions for redesigning the platform were formed.
Needs identified in our research:
- Attractiveness and simplicity - educating residents about public finances.
- Personalization - e.g. adaptation of the presentation to the visual identity of the customer.
- Data reliability - data accurate to one penny.
Process improvement
Another area of interest in the project was the reduction of operational costs in the process of creating each individual presentation.
To this end, we mapped the entire process using the VSM method to identify signs of waste, and as a result:
- We designed intelligent Excel sheets for calculating data that the administrator can enter into the CMS system.
- We created a tool to import data into the CMS from Excel.
- We implemented ready-to-choose default settings in many places.
- We designed a special content management system, so the look of the presentation can be changed with just two clicks.
The improvements we proposed and implemented in the process of creating budget presentations resulted in a reduction in the total time needed to make each individual presentation from 10 days to 4 business hours.
Effects for the Sponsor
Currently, Nacoidamojepieniadze.pl is a functioning SaaS, with a profitable VSM.
>300%
Increase in sold presentations
nr 1
Achieving market position
from 10 days to 4 hours
Shortening the customer service process
Technical description
Challenge
Ensure the efficiency and stability of the entire system due to the media nature of the platform and the very large number of visitors. As a result, our DevOps team designed and implemented a highly efficient and scalable application infrastructure based on the tools offered by AWS.
Google Visibility (SEO)
Most content is generated in a traditional way without dynamic DOM generation, which has positively influenced positioning results.
Technology tailored to SaaS customers
The share of users for Explorer 10 and 11 is over 14 %, so we've enabled the most important functionalities for these browser versions as well.
AWS cloud tools
ElasticBeanstalk, Elasticache, SES, RDS, SNS, CloudFront i Route 53.
Stack
Python (Django), PostgreSQL, JavaScript (ES6) oraz HTML5/CSS3.
