Sigma Labs is a software company that specialises in the development and commercialisation of real-time computer aided inspection solutions known as PrintRite3D® for 3D advanced manufacturing technologies, which allows for real time analysis and reliable quality assurance solution for additive manufacturing of precision metal parts. To generate sales, the marketing agency Solfire Creative planned an advertising campaign for PrintRite3D, that included email, social media, and a set of landing pages. For the landing page, the sales team required a questionnaire included 20-plus questions, not counting name, company name and phone number. This would allow the sales team to better understand the prospective client’s manufacturing needs. Initially, I was brought in by marketing agency to ensure the usability of the questionnaire on the landing pages.

I was given Solfire’s marketing plan and the proposed questionnaire. The marketing plan included a customer profile and target audience for the product. The customer profile was created from interviews with current customers and the sales team. The questionnaire had a specificity which was based on previous interactions with their customers. The instruction given to me was the questionnaire needed to be complete in full *before* before sales could engage the potential customer.

I created a user persona Alex, an engineer whose company is looking improve the quality of their 3D metal parts for industrial use. He’s learned about PrintRite3D at a tradeshow and is curious about its capabilities. When I created the user journey we discovered two problems: the questionnaire was too complex; and, any attempt to resolve the complexity resulted with multiple redirects depending on the specific manufacturing options Alex chose. This issue demonstrated that the sales team was not user. It was unrealistic to expect anyone to voluntarily fill out the form for a sales call.

The project creep was out of scope. To create a flexible solution that was achievable within project constraints, I designed a user journey with principles learned from using Adobe’s Marketo, an automated marketing platform – in essence a lead nurture campaign. The user journey underwent several iterations as the stakeholders revised the project’s scope and expected results. Once the user journey was approved, I created an interactive prototype using Adobe XD. The landing page was spread out over several pages, with each page designed to break up very technical data into manageable chunks, as well create lead scoring for the sales team. The interactive prototype underwent several rounds of review from the stakeholders. Once approved, the marketing team was free to write the copy for the website and advertising. The landing page launch on time and in budget.