Affiliate Program Dashboard
In 2021, Teachable launched the Affiliate Program, which allowed our customers to sell their courses via their own students, as long as they shared some of the profit with them.
However, there was no client-facing data available in place to understand how useful this feature actually was to school owners.
I proposed the creation of an Affiliate Dashboard, which would allow our customers to track which of their affiliates provided the most value and how much of their total sales were triggered by our new program.
My suggestions not only helped us understand the success of the Affiliate Program, but also whether customers should invest more time into this specific marketing tool to boost their sales.
Problem Statement and Initial Research
What information users want to see?
How much details should the product offer?
There has been data-related, specifically about affiliate program. requests through ‘Zendesk’.Auditing Zendesk tickets is a starting point to understand users demands and expectations.In addition, comparative analysis is conducted to consolidate information architecture for the product.
Research Goal
Identify users data demands
Decide information architecture of the product
Learn existing analytics tools
Zendesk Audit
1. To target the related tickets, I sorted tickets with certain criteria below.
Recent tickets: Sort out tickets issued later than 2021
Having description ‘affiliate, dashboard, affiliates or data’
Order the tickets
2. Tickets are sub-categorized by its context
After auditing service request tickets from creators, I could identify users demands and also make sure
there is a strong demand toward affiliate dashboard offering basic affiliate-related metrics.
“How do we track which affiliates are doing the ‘best’?”
“How can he understand the sum?”
“Why I can’t see the affiliate dashboard”
Information Architecture
I chose competitors and similar service providers offering sales dashboards.
Direct Competitors : Kajabi, Thinkific
Similar Service Providers: Shopify, Etsy
I analyzed dashboards of other service providers by three categories and created information architecture diagrams
for each service provider.
Monitoring Dashboards
Interactive Analytics
Navigational Dashboard
Monitoring / Analytics Separate
All data in one place
All data in one place
Monitoring / Analytics Separate
Architecture Proposal
To offer metrics in affiliate category only, Monitoring Dashboard is going to be provided.
As a long term vision for all the reporting product of Teachable, I proposed a hybrid model.
Proposed information architecture diagram
Application to page level
Design Iteration
Components Design
To deliver meaning through basic data points, contextual information is critical. The key components should contain this information in a succinct form. I came up with two possible anatomies of the components.
(Contextual information example: instead of only affiliate sales, affiliate sales amount compared to business level sales)
Anatomy Option 1
Anatomy Option 2
Wire Frame
Since this is an additional feature on the existing application, I decide to skip ‘low-fi’ prototype and jump right into ‘Mid / High-Fi’ Prototype.
Final Design
To test the final design on an ‘unmoderated’ testing platform, a running prototype is required. Usertesting.com is selected for the testing.
Running prototype of final design iteration
Beta Launch
Beta service users for the initial launch are required. Among the existing users adopting ‘affiliate program’, following logic is used.
Creators who submitted tickets related to ‘affiliate, dashboard or data’
Creators who have generated gmv (Gross Merchandise Value)
Creators who have earned gmv through affiliate program last 6 months (Transaction date - today’s date <180)
What’s Next?
The product is not fully released to the entire creators.
Further updates are going to be updated.
Post launch interview
Adding conversion metrics
(currently unavailable in back-end)Adding advanced analytics under a dedicated reporting tab.