Re-designing Monthly Email Report
Reasons why this story is interesting
I inserted a survey in an email I redesign in 2017. After the new email has been released, there were 8,762 users provided their responses, and 96% of them said they are Agree or Strongly agree that the new report was very helpful.
Trend Micro Maximum Security customers can subscribe to a service that they will receive a monthly email report summarizing the security status of their devices. Users can learn what happened on their devices in the past 30 days at a glance.
Before the redesign, there were approximately 30% of users who will read their email report. BTW, read means users stay on the mail for 8+ seconds before they leave. Data also showed an interesting correlation that customers who read the email report at least once during their license period contributed higher renewal rate than those who never read any email report. This is why the requirement was proposed.
In order to attract more attention, enriching the email report to include not only security data from PC, but also from Mac computers, Android devices, and iOS devices was defined as the business requirement. BTW again, Maximum Security customers can activate the protection on their Mac, Android or iOS devices with the sam license they purchased.
The design challenges
- Information hierarchy must be rearranged because there are data from other platforms to be displayed on the same email. Besides, I was not sure whether device-based or feature-based hierarchy can easily convey the messages in the report.
- I needed to work with more stakeholders than ever. Let me count: 7 different R&D teams, 2 global PMs, 2 regional PMs, 4 Support CJMs, and 3 localization teams; located on 5 different regions. Communications took up a great portion of my time and efforts.
A. Design Concept
First thing first, I called a meeting to discuss with developers about technical limitations and feasibilities. I drew what I had in my head to visualize a design concept for a better communication.
After technical discussions, I came up with 4 design proposals.
1. Looking Good or Things To Do
The status bar at the top delivers an immediate message whether or not there was any security event required user’s attention in the last 30 days, such as a malicious app found on a iPhone. On the other hand when ‘Everything loos ok’, users can have a peace of mind because Trend Micro has done a good job protecting their devices.
2. Data Lover
This proposal 2 tried to demonstrate as much statistics as possible about what Trend Micro has done for users. One of the common design challenges for Trend Micro’s products is the protections usually occur in the background without much visibility. Users don’t know we actually have prevented them from dangers. Raising user’s awareness on the product value is the core of this Data Lover proposal.
3. Most Valuable Thing First
It is a twist of the proposal 2. The different is to have the focal point on the greatest achievement we have done for users, like the number of ransomware we’ve blocked.
4. Features Over Devices
I tried to reuse how the information is organized and presented in the existing email report and added data from Mac computers, Android and iOS devices. The design assumption was users won’t feel that surprised when they start to receive new email report. Besides, there could be one reading preference that users might only care about few certain categories/features.
B. User Research
There were several design reviews with multiple stakeholders to collect feedback and comments afterwards. After some modifications, there were 3 final ideas. I also decided to make a head2head battle to let users tell me what they like or dislike. I worked with a UX research and prepared physical materials for her to conduct the interviews.
C. Crafted Design Specifications
Without big surprises, P1 design received more positive feedback from the user interviews and was chosen to proceed to further design development. When I added more details onto the design, I came up with more ideas.
- Different titles make the reports sightly dynamic; after all, I don’t want users to open the report each month and see the same thing. That will just stop them from opening the email.
- An area is reserved for Marketing to do mini campaigns. It could be a survey, a new feature intro, latest threat news, a sales promotion… the possibility of this area is versatile.
- Devices that require user’s attention will be in the top order, so that after users learn from the title that they have some things to do, they can see the items right below the top bar.
Feedback From The Field
8 months after the new design had gone out in the field on September 2017, we pulled out the data collected from the mini survey embedded in the email report.
Was this report helpful to you?
There were totally 8,762 responses. 96% of them (8,465) said they are either Agree or Strongly agree.
Bonus
More and more customers use their mobile phone to check the email report. This is how the report look like on Gmail app.
