Vidmob Safe Zone — A sneak peak that reduced ad revisions by 40%


Brand managers should have the capability to preview ads on social media platforms prior to publishing.


The brief — the problem, goals, & impact


Problem

Social media platforms have become increasingly prevalent channels for advertising. However, through customer support tickets we found that 12% of customers were requesting ad revisions from Vidmob's in-house creators after accepting the final draft. This caused extended campaign timelines and refund requests.

Goal

Design a tool that enables Vidmob in-house creators and marketing teams (customers) to accurately preview ads before publishing.

Impact

—40% reduction in ad revisions

Brand managers are asking ad creators for revisions after accepting the final draft —but why?


We worked closely with the customer success team to identify a recurring issue. We discovered that most customers requesting extra revisions were doing so because of formatting problems. Since the tickets lacked detailed information, I teamed up with UXR to organize interviews with 10+ ad creators and customers.

Synthesized insights

—Content was being obstructed by control buttons (ex. important CTAs behind a like button).
—Most ad creators were aware of certain areas that content shouldn’t be placed in, but they didn’t have the tools to properly format.

How might we help creators and customers visualize how ads will be displayed on social media platforms?


As a team, we explored several directions, including a safe zone overlay, built-in static buttons, dynamic positioning, social media test environments, and a documentation page. Together, we developed an impact-effort matrix to pinpoint a solution that would deliver significant impact with minimal implementation effort. Ultimately, this process led us to focus on "Safe Zone Overlays" as our chosen solution.


Early sketches

Before sketching different flows, we set three design goals: discoverability, scalability, and reusability. The initial question was, "Where should this feature be located?" It's crucial for in-house creators to preview ads before presenting them to clients, so integrating it into the editing environment made sense. However, given the large amount of features that already existed, finding the right placement wasn't straightforward. I explored different entry points for usability testing to determine the most discoverable option. Another question that arose was “How much context do users need?” I sketched interactions with varying steps and context to validate later.

Usability testing


Option 1:

In this design flow, I created a new entry point for safe zone (users would have to tap on the eye). After tapping on the eye, a modal would appear that describes Safe Zone with a toggle. Through testing, we found that the eye icon was unclear, resulting in low discoverability. Creators valued the caption that clarified the purpose of the safe zone, but wished for additional context regarding which social platform it was intended for.



Option 2:

In this design flow, the entry point to Safe zone lived inside the more menu. We hypothesized that this entry point would have the highest discoverability, due to it's placement in a high traffic modal. After usability testing this flow, we found that our hypothesis was correct.



Option 3:

To turn on Safe Zone, users would tap the eye on and off. We got feedback, that the eye icon was ambigious and that there was little context that this was a safe zone.

Iterations based on usability testing


Following usability testing, we chose to implement the first design flow. Although it was less discoverable than the second option, I decided to enhance it with a tooltip, a strategy that has proven effective previously. Additionally, I collaborated with the UX copy team to modify the caption text, providing context about the social media platform associated with the safe zone.

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The results — user and business impact


By releasing "Safe Zone", we were able to reduce revisions between creators and brand managers by 40%. Ad creators and brand managers are now able to check formatting before posting the ad live, to determine what the ad looks like on social media platforms.