DIGITALOCEAN
Marketplace SaaS Add-Ons
TL;DR
The Marketplace Team launched third-party software-as-a-service Add-Ons for users to integrate into their DO experience, with consolidated billing. I joined just before GA and helped wrap up loose ends and finish some fast followers post-GA.
The Opportunity
I joined DigitalOcean in February of 2022. Within two weeks, I was shadowing team members conducting research related to a project called SaaS Add-Ons, which was a new product offering from the Marketplace group that provided users the ability to sign up for and integrate with trusted third party services through DO, so they could pay for said services alongside their DO resources, as opposed to having to manage yet another billing experience. The project had been in closed beta and then public beta prior to my joining, but still had some loose ends to tie up prior to GA (April 2022).
My Role and Partners
Hats worn 🧙🏻♀️: IA, interaction design, content strategy, ux writing, visual design, accessibility, legal liaison, QA
Partners: Other members of the UX team, namely two designers who were already in the midst of conducting some user research about naming this product; product managers; legal; engineering.
Loose Ends
Loose ends I helped tie up during this sprint to the finish included:
assisting with synthesis of ongoing naming research
implementation of research recommendations where feasible
content creation and management in CMS, incl. creating entirely new pages, page templates, and publishing said pages on launch day
UI cleanup of some final pages and designs, including pages within marketplace.digitalocean.com, the Add-Ons page in cloud.digitalocean.com, and some of the creation and management flows for users signed up for Add-Ons.
UI and IA cleanup of Vendor Portal experience, especially around secrets management and documentation guidelines and best practices.
The Outcome
Marketplace SaaS Add-Ons became generally available April 26th, 2022. Having only been at DO for 2.5 months and only assigned to this team for about four weeks, it was exciting to be responsible in the launch day festivities, even though it was only to publish a few pages from the CMS. Add-Ons saw slow but steadily increasing usage from private beta to public beta to GA, and continue to be a revenue generator for the Marketplace team. The UI experience remains largely unchanged from my work on it pre-GA, and several of my fast-follows made significant UX improvements.
Fast Follows
One major improvement to the SaaS Add-Ons experience a fast-follow I worked on alongside the team’s engineering manager and two UI engineers to allow users the ability to compare Add-On plans within the cloud experience. In its original implementation, users who were enrolled in an Add-On plan weren’t able to see what was available in the tier up or down from the one they were enrolled in without leaving the cloud experience and opening Marketplace in another tab. By moving the comparison and management experience into a single comprehensive flow, Marketplace saw increased conversion from Free to Paid tiers for Add-Ons offered in the cloud.digitalocean.com UI.
During this fast follow, we also added additional support and tutorial/getting started content in the cloud UI for Add-Ons, which gave users access to valuable onboarding and troubleshooting information in context of the Add-On itself.