A Simple, Intuitive User Dashboard.
A lot of software tries to give users as many options as possible. Whatever the user might think to do, product creators offer an option to do it. Instead of resulting in a better product, this often leads to a dashboard with too many options and obscure commands.
The user wastes time understanding and searching through options. Coupled with unfamiliar technical terminology, this ends up leaving many users frustrated and confused. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this WordPress dashboard
We wanted to create a website builder for non-technical content creators. After testing different dashboards on users, I found that the fewer options you gave the more the majority of our target audience liked it. I wanted people to see their dashboard, easily view starting actions, and immediately be able to tell where everything is.
I reduced our dashboard from 10 side menu items to 4. I narrowed the list of suggested actions down to 3, instead of displaying a full list of actions that they could take. As a result, our product became intuitive. We stopped having to spend unnecessary time on live chat walking people through how to use the product.
We began to notice an influx of older and non-technical customers who were able to set up their websites without any help. It also meant that our business and agency customers didn’t have to waste any time training employees on how to use the new software.