Integrations redesign (Soldo)
Soldo
Soldo is an expense management platform designed to help businesses simplify their spending. Companies create Soldo cards with prepaid balances and spending limits, then assign them to their employees, projects and teams. This lets them manage budgets, spending and reconciliation with ease.
Background
One of the ways Soldo can help make the reconciliation process easier is through integrations. These allow the user to sync their Soldo account with the other financial and business systems they use, such as accounting software and HR tools.
To integrate their Soldo account with an account they hold with Sage or QuickBooks, for example, a user needs to find the relevant integration within the Soldo platform, and connect to it by completing the setup flow.
When I joined Soldo, these integrations could be found in a dedicated section of the platform called ‘Integrations’. The Integrations page was fairly basic, with a card for each integration containing a button, a name and a paragraph of text about that integration. Cards were added at random and integrations were not grouped by type (e.g. accounting, HR, e-commerce). The copy designed to give more context and information was hidden behind the ‘Learn more’ button, and the page name was clear but uninspiring.
The problem
The decision to redesign the Integrations page came about for several reasons:
Introduction of the new ‘Business API’ feature
The Business API feature was a crucial addition for Soldo, allowing us to offer more flexibility and autonomy to our users. The feature gives the user access to the Soldo Business API, allowing them to build custom applications and integrations, in order to make Soldo work faster and more efficiently for their specific needs.
Through interviews with some of our current users, we learnt that they would expect to find a feature like this in the Integrations section of the Soldo platform.
This posed a problem, as those users had been told we were developing this feature, and asked where they would expect to find it. They already knew what they were looking for.
Although the Business API feature allows users to develop their own integrations, they are not the same as those predefined by Soldo. A single card on the Integrations page for this new feature, placed at random among the rest, could easily be missed. With the Integrations page as it was, for users who didn’t know that the Business API feature existed, it could be very difficult for them to discover.
Introduction of the new ‘Custom template’ feature
The Custom template was another new feature we developed around this time. It allows users to create a template for exporting transactions that is completely customisable. The user creates the template to exactly match the information required by their accounting software, then exports their transactions from Soldo as a CSV file, and uploads them directly into their accounting tool. This provides a way for users of accounting tools not directly supported by Soldo to indirectly integrate their accounts, saving them a huge amount of time and manual effort.
In a similar way to the Business API feature, the Custom template feature is best suited to the Integrations section of the Soldo platform, but does differ from the predefined integrations. From research done after its release, we found the feature had been received extremely positively by our users. However, uptake of the feature was much lower than we had expected. We suspected this was due in part to it’s placement within the Integrations page, and users simply not discovering it.
General usability of the page
As well as the Integrations page not allowing us the flexibility to effectively introduce new features, it was not very user friendly for the existing integrations we had either, or those we knew we wanted to introduce in the future. There was no categorisation or option to search or sort, meaning different types of integration (e.g. accounting, HR, e-commerce) would be jumbled together and very difficult to find. There was no dedicated space for any additional copy, and the paragraph copy on each of the cards was generic, long and difficult to compare between integrations. The page was cluttered, confusing and didn’t encourage the user to explore.
The solution
Placement and naming
Collaborating with the UX designer, I worked to come up with a solution that would address all of these problems. We started by solving the problem of where to place the new Business API and Custom template features. Through discussion with the team and market research, we decided to keep the Custom template feature on the Integrations page, but in a dedicated area, and the Business API feature within the same section, but on a different page.
This meant introducing a new sub-section and changing the information architecture for the Soldo platform’s main nav menu. I thought about different solutions, experimenting with a new name for the main section, which could then be broken down into the ‘Integrations’ and ‘Business API’ sub-sections. I tested various names like ‘Third party’ and ‘Applications’ with our users, but the results were mixed. ‘Integrations’ remained the strong favourite.
So I started thinking about a different solution. As ‘Integrations’ was such a clear, straightforward and universally understood term, I’d need to keep it as the name for the main section. Replacing it would create ambiguity, causing friction for our current users and confusion for our future ones. This meant I’d need to find a new way of naming the current Integrations page, which would still contain the integration cards, but would now become a sub-section.
I thought about the page and what we wanted to achieve. I also turned to our roadmap and considered the future requirements for the section, and how we saw its purpose evolving over time. After considering all the requirements and doing some more market research, I decided to call the page ‘Marketplace’.
Here are a few reasons why:
We wanted the page to act as a ‘Soldo shopfront’ - a place where users could mix and match integrations and tools to customise their Soldo experience.
We wanted to create intrigue and demonstrate that the page offered variety for our users, encouraging them to come and explore, and allowing them to discover new integrations and features.
We wanted to create a place where users could come and ‘shop’ for certain tools, adding them to their account without having to upgrade their monthly plan.
Usability
Along with breaking the main section down into two sub-sections and changing the name, we also redesigned the Marketplace page to give it a whole new look and feel.
Taking all the problems we needed to solve into account, along with current and future requirements for the page, we:
Added copy with an editorial tone to the top of the page to provide context, and to reinforce the idea of this being a shopfront for Soldo, where users can explore and add new tools and integrations to suit their needs.
Grouped our existing integrations by category, and introduced the ability to filter them.
Added a line of copy under each new integration category to provide context and further help users to navigate the page.
Introduced an ‘Active integrations’ section so users can see at a glance which tools and integrations they are currently connected with.
Removed the paragraph copy from each of the integration cards, and replaced it with bullet points, allowing users to scan the content quickly and compare the benefits of similar integrations with ease.
Created a page which is future proof, giving us the flexibility we need to expand and evolve our offering as a company.
In summary
The redesign of the Integrations page came out of a need to introduce new features, and a recognition that what we had just wasn’t working for our users. During this project, I collaborated with researchers, UX and UI designers, developers, product owners and product managers to change the information architecture, redesign the Integrations section and completely overhaul the user experience. The end result is not only more engaging and user friendly, but is also scaleable and future proof, ready to adapt, evolve and grow with the Soldo product as a whole.