Global Security Company

A global security company wanted to improve the usability and user experience of their internal partner portal. I conducted a usability test and a heuristic review of the portal to aid in a redesign. A timeline was presented to the team before the project began. They were in a time crunch, and I needed to work within those constraints.

What is the Partner Portal?

The portal is a dedicated and secure website where partners have access to sales tools, training, and marketing campaigns. This is the single touchpoint for the company’s partners to access Profile Management, Lead Management, Deal Registration, Online Training, and Fund Management—making the success of the portal important to both the company and its partners.

Stakeholder Interviews

To begin, I interviewed stakeholders and gathered their goals for the project and hypotheses about what the test might uncover. The goals of this research project were to identify opportunities for improvement and uncover user pain points.

The stakeholders expected to learn that

• There was too much text on each page

• Training was difficult for users to complete

• Related information was scattered across many different pages

• Users didn’t make use of the quick links section on the homepage

Challenges

I tried to get specific website analytics that would help support the hypotheses we were testing as part of the study, but I was told they didn’t have the capability. I was provided metrics that were not useful to the study.

I asked if I could send out a survey about the portal to existing users to gather more information, but was denied. The company would shortly be sending out their annual survey, and they didn’t want anything to take precedence or dissuade partners from completing the annual survey.