Sprout Social's core function relies on connecting social profiles (TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) for social marketing management.
As one of Sprout's earliest features, profile connection faced API challenges and legacy issues that competitors highlighted as weaknesses.
As Senior Product Designer, I led research and design to improve Sprout Social's profile connection experience. Key responsibilities:
We conducted research to improve our profile disconnect experience through:
This research revealed key themes and user pain points throughout the journey.
Profile Disconnect warning is used in 2 places. Preferences where users are getting confused on why they can’t get an email. The notification center which seems to get lost amongst other notifications.
What we learned: Users are confused on why notifications are listed in preferences but yet they can’t select it. We’ve seen users don’t go into the web app often on weekends. If a profile disconnects on a weekend it could be detrimental to their work.
Once a profile disconnects there are 2 types of notifications. Email and Notification drawer. Recent efforts are improving the experience by lessening copy and giving more specific reasons why a profile disconnects.
Across the Sprout App how we show a profile is disconnected is inconsistent sometimes a profile is shown for being disconnected othertimes it isn't called out at all.
What we learned: Not all users are checking their notification channels. Users aren’t finding out that a profile is disconnected until sometimes weeks later. While it is important to send a notification for action to an admin that can reconnect a profile. It seems important to highlight the disconnect and notify an entire team. If someone needs to act on a fail post or has something scheduled. It can lead to panic and confusion when they don’t know how to move forward.
Profile reconnection was generally straightforward with an 80% success rate. Of 91K disconnect notifications viewed over 3 months, 72.6K users accessed the disconnect content. However, we lacked proper event tracking to confirm successful reconnections, as analytics only showed unspecified page views.
In addition analysis showed weekday profile disconnections were typically resolved within 1-2 days, with an 80% reconnection rate.
Weekend disconnections posed a bigger problem—profiles often stayed disconnected for 3-4 days. This frustrated users who had scheduled content to be published during these periods.
Based on our research findings, I presented key proposals to improve profile connection to both project management and engineering teams for approval and feasibility assessment.
Proposal: Having consistent UI styling for disconnected profiles to improve overall awareness, since profile disconnects were mainly shown in easily missed notifications.
Results: We introduced a new in-app toast alert
Proposal: Improve generic messaging for profile disconnections by updating email notifications, particularly for Facebook profiles.
Result: Successfully improved 75% of Facebook profile disconnects through implementing clearer email messaging with the help of a dedicated tiger team.
Proposal: Profile disconnect warnings previously included email notifications, but this feature was removed. I proposed reintroducing these notifications.
Results: Implementation faced technical hurdles due to inconsistent API capabilities across networks and challenges in communicating network-specific details effectively.
Proposal: Integrate notifications with Slack & Teams to reach admins who may not regularly check Sprout or email.
Results: Currently, we have implemented limited integration with Slack through webhooks. A broader integration project is in the works that will enable all notifications to be sent through Slack.
Proposal: Legacy technical issues prevent tracking who connects profiles. I proposed adding "profile manager" permissions to identify reconnection contacts.
Result: The proposal was approved but put on hold for a new integration team to implement as part of their future roadmap.
Proposal: Due to users lacking a centralized view of profile statuses, we proposed creating a dedicated status drawer separate from notifications that would be accessible to all users.
Results: The concept received positive feedback from stakeholders, but was agreed to wait on while we investigated on other improvements.
Proposal: After brainstorming with engineering managers, we developed a feature that gives users the option to strengthen their connection while adding or reconnecting profiles, when technically feasible.
Result: Implementation was completed in late 2024. Early data shows promising results in improving profile connection rates, though we continue to gather metrics to fully assess the impact.
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