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Keyword Planner Case Study

Solution Design for SAAS Digital Product

The Team
1 UX Designer (Me)
1 UX Researcher
1 UX Writer
1 Product Manager
3 Engineers

Company
Google

Contract Duration
1 year

My Role

  • Connected with cross-functional team members and UXR 
    to determine the most prominent user education pain points

  • Designed Solutions to alleviate these pain points

  • Collaborated with UX writer to articulate complex in
    tool education

Background

What is a Keyword Planner? A Google Ads tool that helps you generate and forecast the best keywords to maximize your ad campaign.

The Problem

Keyword Planner has been around for nearly a decade and has over 700K users monthly. But with all the recent UI changes even seasoned users have some confusion over fully grasping the complexities of the tool.

Say I want my product ad to run on relevant searches...

Arrows pointing to Dove Men +Care Face Wash with description "Run this ad when someone types these searches. Arrows pointing to Google search of "men's face wash".

Keyword Planner helps me find effective keywords for my campaign

UX Research

User Feedback

According to research conducted by the UXR department, users were struggling to understand the depth of all Keyword Planner is capable of. Existing in tool help was not clear.

Quote boxes "There should be Youtube video instructions" and "A small tutorial or example flash video of how to apply and where to apply these keywords for new users."

Finding the Pain Points

In collaboration with UXR and the technical support departments, we identified 6 main pain points based off customer satisfaction and technical support reports.

6 pain points including 1- Understanding Eligibility 2-Translating metric 3-Confusion around Search by website 4-Trusting campaign changes 5-Understanding plan creation 6- Understanding how to save a plan

For the purpose of this case study we'll only be focusing on Pain Point #1 which makes up  36% of annual technical support tickets.

Pie piece graphic depicting the first pain point - "Understanding Eligibility" accounting for 36% of annual tech support tickets

Objective

Our main objective is to make Keyword Planner more approachable providing various aids at known pain points to broaden understanding. To do this, we’ll need to define the principles for which we’ll aim to design around.

Content must be relevant. Users percive tool as smart.

UI must be “user aware”. Content should not appear spammy, generic or noisy. Remobe or reconsider if so.

UX lends clarity and transparency. Aid in growing user trust.

Provide enough granularity w/o provoking user confusion. Build content & context within tool if possible.

Content must be scaleable. Make future rollouts easier.

Solutions should be easy to implement and upkeep across ongoing feature rollouts.

Let’s take a closer look at our 1st pain point CUJ (critical user journey):

  1. Keyword Eligibility

Visual of a user typing in "kids facewash" into the Keyword Planner search field for Keyword Planner and an error message states "all keywords were removed, try a different keyword." Question marks arise around this error message.

Question

Why were “All keywords removed?”

Answer

Because all keywords related to children are flagged as “sensitive”

An Expensive Problem

Because keyword eligibility accounts for 36% of help tickets annually, time and money are being wasted to resolve thousands redundant occurrences.

The Challenge

  • Because users with ill intent have tried to explore Keyword Planner, the tool over flags sensitive keywords

  • Until now, the team has chosen to keep the error message language vague but it’s leaving honest users incredibly confused

  • Copy related solutions call for collaboration with a UX writer

  • Updating this text required approval from Google’s Public Relations team

Working With a UX Writer

In a working doc, the UX writer and I tracked all original and proposed text. My rough passes were reviewed and re-written by the UX writer. Scheduled check-ins to review and collaborate

Action Steps to the Solution

  • Clarify why the user’s keyword(s) did not work

  • Provide insight as to what else might work

  • Place the resources easily within reach when the error message is received

Visual with label: "Solution #1 Clarify text and add 'Learn more' link to the flagged message." Updated UI shows the error message now reads "One of more keywords may be sensitive. try a different keyword or URL." There is also a "Learn more" link.
Visual with label: "Solution #2 'Learn more' link pulls up a quick help further explanation." Updated UI shows a panel of quick help resources with a more thorough explantion.

Final Solution

After many iterations and cross-functional reviews, our final solution successfully clarified the user’s confusion over keyword eligibility, resulting in an estimated 45% decrease in annual help tickets generated for this pain point and an estimated $100,000 saved for help desk resources.