Microsoft 365 Admin Center

Marketplace

Launched Feb 2022 | 8 weeks

A marketplace helping small and medium business (SMB) admins discover Microsoft solutions to the problems they face every day.

Overview

Background

Microsoft Admin Center is a popular location for buying M365 SKUs, with about 60M annual revenue.This project targeted small and medium businesses (<300 org size), helping them focus on finding solutions that align with their needs to create/manage/grow their business.

My Role

I took over this design from an FHL concept. Being the lead designer of this project, I played a key role throughout the rapidly iterative process from ideation to the MVP deliverables. I built wireframes, hi-fi mockups and prototypes to demonstrate my design ideas to stakeholders and to facilitate research and testing.

Stakeholders: I collaborated with Justin Lam (PM), Jackie Tidwell (CX), Veronika Hanson (UXR) and Ginah Oak(A11Y Design)

Who am I Designing for?

Window Shoppers

Targeting IT admins who have a general need in mind but don’t understand or know Microsoft’s specific SKU offerings. They are trying to discover a product that fits their needs.

User Goal

Looking for simple and easy-to-use solutions that focus on enabling the business and assistance in completing their tasks.

What am I
Building Towards?

Business Goal

Improve SMB retention and market share growth (2-year roadmap).
Improve M365 Business Basic to Business Standard upsell.

Need a New Solution for Window Shoppers

The Admin Center only featured a purchase services page that simply listed all Microsoft products with their names and descriptions in plain text. This experience required users to familiarize themselves with the products before making a purchase decision. Therefore, we need a new experience for window shoppers.

Key Features

A marketplace experience that makes it simple and easy for IT Admins to find solutions that align with their needs to create, manage and grow their business.

New Entry

Launched an experimental new L1 node called “Marketplace” in the M365 admin center. Used a teaching bubble to inform users our new change.

Featured

The new storefront experience "Featured" is the default landing for the Marketplace that shows selected, curated offerings from Microsoft while highlighting them visually and focusing on benefits.

All Products

The “All products” catalog is the other portion of Marketplace which users can easily toggle into and dive into specific SKUs they want.

Experiment & Key Results

A/B experiment

We ran a 50/50 A/B experiment: 39k tenants interacted with Purchase Services (control) or Marketplace (treatment).

Marketplace (treatment)

Purchase Services (control)

Key Results

Tenants who reach Marketplace are more likely to make a purchase (28% vs 23%)
When comparing the Basic to Standard upsell, the purchase rate in the Marketplace is significantly higher than on the Homepage (2.9% vs 0.27%)
"Buy again" was effective, over 200 net seats were added through Marketplace.