Vimix Web Application

User Inputs

As a product manager and designer, I spent a lot of time working with users. I gathered input in a variety of ways to measure feedback and product value to inform the platform development. I listened to the needs of engaged users to optimize platform usability and iron out issues or bugs.

User Research

I completed target audience research and interviews with potential users who could benefit from Vimix to develop and validate user personas, such as comedians, speakers, small businesses or content creators.

Beta Users

I conducted regular user interviews to check-in with users and listen to their experiences with the Vimix platform. I worked to engage and support our beta users who were testing the Vimix platform to help them reach their goals and build a better platform experience.

Metrics

We used the Drift widget along with Google Analytics to track user engagement, daily application usage, and provide customer support.

Platform Evolution

Landing Page Revisions

One of the first projects I worked on with the Founder was to create a new iteration of product and brand messaging to align with our change in direction. Vimix was initially known as Vidlogs and underwent a re-branding during my first months as a contractor.

To align our digital presence with the new Vimix brand, I completed a content audit, a competitor analysis, along with user interviews and user research prior to completing any major online changes. I prepared the new brand collateral to complete the transition, developed the copy for the product messaging across our website, landing pages, and led this iterative process over time.

Once the brand positioning and messaging was stable across our marketing channels, I worked with the Founder to streamline our site development process to ship changes rapidly without developer engagement. Ultimately, I was able to manage the public-facing website in its entirety from content development to website design and development.

Content Development

One of the major pieces of this strategy was building niche sites for the purposes of social discovery, by sharing popular videos to thematic social channels. For example, I wrote and published short articles about podcasts that would be popular for the startup community on launchdeck.tv, a domain purchased by Sixfactors to demonstrate the use of the platform.

Another project I initiated during my time as the product manager was the Use Vimix site. I recognized a need for how-to videos as a way to provide simple self-help support method. I created a number of videos to bring this idea to life, and uploaded them to the use.vimix.tv site to share across social channels. The videos also served as a way to demonstrate the platform’s capabilities, generate awareness, and test the experience of new features.

Feature Development

Social Distribution and Scheduling

I recognized the Vimix platform was great at managing and organizing video content, yet lacked the shareability that would ultimately draw users to browse or watch videos on the site.

I learned this from manually testing the platform to analyze usability. When testing how Vimix links would share on social platforms, they lacked the metadata required for each platform. Sharing was not optimized for social networks.

I researched some of the current choices out there such as Buffer, Hootsuite, and the built-in sharing features on Facebook. I have personally used Buffer as a Content Designer for Freeman Audio Visual, and I enjoyed the experience of sharing content on a predefined schedule. This makes content marketing simpler for the modern professional, having the ability to schedule batches of content for weeks at a time in one sitting.

Buffer’s upgraded plans offer a visual content calendar that allows users to see, at-a-glance, what content is being shared, when, and on which networks. I validated the need for this proposed feature with current beta users, and they supported the use of an easy to manage content calendar for scheduled social distribution.

I talked to users and listened to what they needed with regards to audience building and social sharing. I had users explain their current workflow, and one of the common pain points was the preparation of content for social sharing. Many users found they would complete their content in batches and would publish or share the content in increments to continually engage their audience.

We decided to include the additional feature of publishing to your Vimix site on a schedule, similar to WordPress publishing. This schedule could coordinate directly with social posts, so you could schedule a video to publish to Vimix and simultaneously share across all of your social networks.

This feature is important because of search engine optimization. Videos are highly indexed by search engines, in addition to that, websites that receive updated content regularly are also indexed highly. Given the ability to schedule posts in this manner, Vimix user websites were highly discoverable on YouTube.

I worked with developers to understand the needs of sharing to each platform, such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. We approached this in pieces, by assessing then integrating the APIs for each platform in a staging environment for testing. After we had a high degree of confidence in the new social sharing feature, we released increments to our beta users. Once beta testers were satisfied with the experience, we made it available to all Vimix users.

Takeaways

I learned how to work with users. I learned how to understand customer problems. I learned how to write user stories. I learned how to manage a product. I learned how to develop functional, beautiful websites. I learned how to use Cloud9 IDE. I learned how to use AdobeXD. I learned how to make and edit videos.

I learn best from experiences, and this experience provided me with plenty of challenges, opportunities, and chances to acquire knowledge on my own and from my teammates.