Handshake Plus redesign
TLDR
Handshake has a monetization problem. Less than 0.1% of their employers are paying anything. This project aimed to monetize a greater proportion of employer users either through adjusting the message content to appeal to their needs more effectively, or create new features to generate more interest in premium tiers. Our solution led to the doubling of subscribers of the mid-tier plan within 2 months of launching the updated product, during a downtime in the recruiting market.
Problem
Less than 0.1% of employer users of the platform were spending money on the platform. The paying employers came primarily from our enterprise sales contracts for multiple years. Following the initial launch of the Handshake Plus platform, we saw a plateau of subscribers at approximately 120 for a few months. We were seeking to monetize more of our user base in order to achieve profitability.
With a relative handful of employers signing up for our self-service product Handshake Plus I was called in to run research to determine if our current marketing messaging was effective, and if we could develop new product features to drive greater adoption of the product.
Solution
Everything started with a rapid iterative test and evaluation (RITE) that was thrust upon me at the beginning of 2023. Following the success of a RITE project with another product, the company decided that RITE tests were the way to get changes done.
I had previous experience with RITE testing at Meta, where I worked with the creator Michael Medlock, and began with identifying the potential users of the product so I could recruit them and line up research sessions for the week of the sprint. I was able to successfully recruit for 8 sessions with a backup for each of the sessions as the interviews were going to be attended by the full project team of PMs, Designers, the Director, and Chief Design Officer and their time was valuable.
I worked with the designers to create a testable interface that could be shared with participants while on the video call. Following the usability test and interview I led a debrief session with the stakeholders to listen to notes, suggestions, issues that were caught, and summaries. Small changes were made immediately, while larger changes were made at the end of the day following a synthesis of the interviews of the day. This was repeated for three days before we developed our final prototype that was presented to the leadership team.
Research Analysis
Following the RITE sprint in January 2023, Handshake leadership developed their road map for Handshake Plus based on information they acquired from the demonstration shown by the design team. I continued to analyze these interviews further to develop themes and identify unmet needs that could be monetized.
These individual features expanded the research requests exponentially following the generation of prototypes by the design team. In order to keep the goals achievable within our timeline, I democratized research of these features through the training of multiple designers on the use of the usertesting.com tool for both moderated and unmoderated usability tests. Two of my designers took to the tool quickly and launched over 10 different research projects each, to evaluate some of their concepts with users. Meanwhile I was able to consult with each of the designers to create a test plan and revise tasks to better answer their research questions.
Results
Handshake Plus was launched in mid 2023 and achieved just about 120 active subscribers within a month. The number of subscribers plateaued for a number of months until they brought on a new director of this program that wanted to revisit our previous research.
The designers and I were able to refine some of the features we had developed and present them to this new director who was immediately intrigued and and requested that we conduct additional research to determine the viability of some of the features that we had created.
While the director chose the features that suited his plan, we were able to see a further increase in subscribers to 600 in the two months following the relaunch of Handshake Plus prior to my departure, which was during an off-season for recruiting.
Reflection
I am grateful to the experience of interacting so closely with the Chief Design Officer, as well as the CEO participating in post interview discussion. I was able to see some of the product level decisions made during the meeting following the design sprint and while disappointed that they didn’t include some of my higher priority wishes, I learned how critical it is to build stakeholder buy-in at a lower level to create a groundswell of support. Especially since I was able to see them understand the importance of these features at a later date when they began to implement them and saw the success we knew was possible all along.
