BI Application Home Page Redesign

Reduced the risk of lost sales stemming from complaints about an outdated UI

Problem

Sales were being lost because of an outdated UI

JasperReports Server (JRS) — a web-based business intelligence application — had an outdated UI. Win/loss reports revealed that this dated look and feel was the top reason for losing sales to our competitors.

Constraints

We lacked sufficient resources for a complete overhaul

Completely overhauling the entire application UI all at once would require development resources we didn't have. Developers had some time to help, but markup and JavaScript changes needed to be kept to a minimum.

Solution

We would span improvements over time

A realistic approach to modernizing the look and feel of JRS was to make UI improvements throughout the product incrementally. We would choose one area of the application to improve per release over the course three to four releases.

The Plan

Starting with the home page

We identified the Home page as the area of the application that would get the first UI refresh because it would take the least time. Changes would be made predominantly to the CSS, which I could do without developer help.

Keeping in mind one overarching principle

The home page needed to be useful to free trial users as well as seasoned users. This means we needed to strike a balance between being helpful to new users without cluttering the page with too much for those who are more experienced.

Research

First, some research

The UX team performed an audit of the free trial experience for JRS. We found that some valuable resources are sent to trial users via email that either aren’t available or are hard to find within the application.

This informed our decision to add an extra section to the home page with links to the video tutorials that trial users receive via email during the free trial.

Design