Case Study - IZEA Creator Search

IZEA

WINTER

2018

FIND CREATORS

‍

How

do

I

find

the

best

creators

for

my

campaign?

Overcomplicated Discovery Experience: Despite IZEA’s robust network of over 700K creators, marketers have long been frustrated with the non-intuitive legacy search interface. Although the platform offered a wide array of filtering options, many of these filters added little value to the creator search process. Moreover, because the search results do not update dynamically as new filters are applied, marketers often wasted valuable time constructing elaborate queries that ultimately yielded no results. This fragmented experience made it difficult for brands to quickly identify creators whose style and audience closely matched their campaign objectives.
‍
‍Limited Visual and Actionable Insights: The legacy search results provide minimal context, forcing marketers to click into individual profiles to access crucial details such as content style, follower count, demographics, engagement metrics, and more. Marketers wish to obtain all relevant information directly from the search results page, streamlining their decision-making process.

Process

What Were the Users Saying?

1.

Difficult to Use

The filter system is very complicated to use.
There are a lot of useless filters. About 50% of the filters have never been used.

2.

Search Result

Impossible to see the creator's content in the search results
The search is in a tabular format and shows very little information about the creators.

3.

Too Many Clicks

Need to open the creator's profile to access connection insights, rates, lists, and more.

4.

Sorting

The default sorting does not take profile completeness into account, thus surfacing a lot of bad creator profiles.
The sorting options are very limited.

5.

Lack of Landing Page

Since there isn't a landing page, users always see the same creators on the landing page
Difficult to access saved searches.

6.

Lack of Bulk Actions

Unable to bulk select creators to add to list or project

Process

What Were the Users Saying?

1.

Difficult to Use

The filter system is overly complex, with numerous rarely-used options, leaving marketers overwhelmed and struggling to efficiently navigate creator search.

2.

Search Result

The tabular search layout only shows the creator's basic information such as name, avatar, social platforms, and follower count, requiring the marketers to click on their profile for additional information.

3.

Too Many Clicks

Marketers must repeatedly click into profiles for comprehensive details, underscoring the need for richer, at-a-glance insights directly on the search results page.

4.

Sorting

Default sorting ignores the profile completeness and relevance ranking, often surfacing subpar creators while offering limited options to refine the search results.

5.

Lack of Landing Page

Marketers struggle to find their saved searches or browse creator communities, while the platform shows them the same default creators every time they click into Creator Search.

6.

Lack of Bulk Actions

Marketer are unable to perform bulk actions and were forced to take actions individually on each creator profile, slowing down the process of organizing and managing large-scale campaigns.

Solution

Opportunities

User-friendly filtering system

to support the mix and match of 20+ filters and to precisely search through 700K+ creators.

Highly visual creator results

to easily compare the follower distribution and content aesthetics between creators.

Badges and contextual hovers

in the creator result to get all necessary information without having to click into individual profiles.

New scoring suite

to better evaluate the attractiveness of the creator’s profiles and showcase the best creators at the top of search results.

Updated search landing page

to help users initiate their search with creator communities or access their saved searches without trouble.

Bulk actions

in creator results to manage creator selection at scale, whether it is adding dozens of creators to a list at once or inviting them to bid on a project.

Deliverable

Introducing Creator Search

Deliverable

Search Result

Basic Info

High level information about the creator including badges, community, location, and CRM.

Social Metrics

Analytics and follower distribution for the creator’s social connections.

Recent Content

Recent content published by the creator’s on their most followed connection.

Keyword Insights

Learn about how many times the keyword was mentioned in the creator's content as well as their performance.

Rates

Creator’s asking price for creating a sponsored post.

Deliverable

Search Bar

Keyword Search

Search through the creator’s profile to find creators who are experts in the topic of your choice.

Active Filters

Get a bird’s eye view of all the filters you have applied.

Suggested Filters

Apply a suggested filter to help you narrow down your results.

My Network

Quickly toggle between all creators and creators belonging to your network.

Deliverable

Filter Controls

Filter Dropdowns

20+ filters ranging from creator demographics to audience data and connection insights to help you narrow down your creator results.

Deliverable

Contextual Hovers

Hover Overs

Contextual hover overs to provide all the additional information you’re looking when you mouseover badges, analytics, and charts in the search result.

Email Invite

The system automatically pulls the Discovered Creator’s email from their bio so marketers can easily reach out to the Creators or invite them to join the platform.

Content Details

Details about the content including description, publish date, post URL, sponsored badge, brand mentions, and performance.

Deliverable

Landing Page

Easily Start Searching

Don’t know where to start? Pick a community to kickoff your creator search.

Saved Searches

Access your saved searches on the updated search landing page and see how many new creators meet your requirements.

Feedback

What's Next

Dynamic Search Result

In the current design, the creator cards stays relatively static no matter which filter you have applied. In the future, we would love to render the creator cards dynamically based on your active filters. For example, if you apply an audience gender: female > 60% filter, we would show you the exact audience gender distribution of those creators.

Searching Through Content

Currently, the keyword search is only able to search through the creator's profile and tags but not their content. It would bring tremendous value to marketers if we can search through our entire database of content and find you creators that have mentioned the keyword in their posts.

Personalized Search Landing Page

In this version, the homepage of creator search shows users creator communities and their saved searches. It would be more helpful to the marketers if we can surface creators that are more relevant to their previous searches or creators that talk about their brand.

Better Sorting Algorithm

The "best match" sorting option we currently offer is based on a pre-calculated score that takes into account the quality of the creator's profile, their follower count, and their activeness on the platform. It would be more useful to the marketers if we could make the sorting algorithm more relevant to each user as well as taking the creator's content into account.

Work Samples

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