Designing PeopleSmart’s B2B acquisition journey

I used competitor analysis, stakeholder interviews and LTV’s experience with contact data to form hypotheses about sales, marketing and recruiting users.

These weren’t treated as validated personas, but they helped us decide what the website needed to explain, then test those assumptions after launch.

I audited the old website and search experience against our target audience.

PeopleSmart had strong search and data capabilities, but the experience mixed consumer, privacy, and professional messaging. It wasn’t clear who the product was for, what users would get, or why they should subscribe.

Instead of sending users straight to pricing, the search flow showed progress and built value before asking them to subscribe.

The redesigned journey carried the user’s original search through loading, lead capture and report building before showing the subscription page.

Search led visitors first experienced the value through their own query, while pricing first visitors began by comparing membership options. Both paths ultimately led to trial activation and data access..

Giving the new direction a visual language

With the journey defined, I explored how PeopleSmart could feel credible and professional without adopting the complexity or impersonal tone of enterprise sales tools. Early homepage concepts helped compare different approaches to positioning, hierarchy, search prominence and visual storytelling.

New homepage design brought the new B2B positioning and visual direction into one focused, search-first experience.

After several iterations, I chose a direction that made search the focal point while showing the value and breadth of the data around it.

Building the shared design system

Once the visual direction was set, I built a shared design system to keep the website, search, lead capture, and subscription flows consistent.

Finishing the remaining marketing pages and designing the search and subscription flows

After building the design system, I carried that same visual language across the brand. I worked closely with the product and engineering to bring it all to launch and made sure everything matches the specs.

A/B tested the search and subscription flows to reduce drop-off and help more users reach subscription.

After shipping the initial redesign, we started running A/B tests on the search and subscription flows against live traffic to identify the friction and drop-off points. We tested different versions of each step in the flow in an effort to help more people to reach the next step and eventually subscribe.

When a version performed better, we made it the new control and started optimizing from there.

Made the search feature more flexible by adding optional search fields

As search needs grew more complex, I prioritized flexibility over decoration, keeping three core fields visible and replacing the hero illustration with optional fields users could reveal as needed.

We tried to use the waiting period of loading page to gather some more user data and also educate them about the product offerings

Submitting a search introduced a short loading period before lead capture. We tested whether this time should collect additional audience information or demonstrate the value users were waiting for.

We tested the short vs long lead capture form to understand which one works better

After users invested time in a search, we tested how much information should be required to save their progress and move them to the next step comfortably.

Testing the user engagement and collecting more data before showing the final report

We tested 2 variants where we asked the users goal-based questions to learn more about their use cases, and another variant simply showing the product value before sending them to payment page.

We tested whether users were ready to commit to upfront monthly plans or go for a smaller first commitment.

Two variants presented plans before a free or $1 trial; the third offered seven days for $1, followed by full billing unless canceled.