Designing “How to Buy” on Salesforce.com

Let’s face it, Salesforce is a very complex product that requires some effort to understand the differences between each product in the product family and how they’re each configured to the needs of the customer. Furthermore, there isn’t an obvious way to purchase Salesforce as you do on most e-commerce sites such as Amazon and their big yellow “Buy it now” call to action that you can never miss. The reason for this is the complexity and limitless solutions that Salesforce has to offer. They try to personalize and offer features that are tailored to the customer’s needs. This project shows how I solved this challenge by adding an experience without moving or iterating content on Salesforce.com.

Project Goal

Users have difficulty understanding how to buy our products as the only way to purchase Salesforce is by either contacting us or taking a free trial. By giving users different options to purchase our products, they will have more confidence, direction and know what to expect during that process.

Discovery — How does “how to buy” content support the buying process?

Heuristic Evaluation

Nowhere on our site does it say you can buy our products. We do not show the different methods a user can buy our products. Nowhere on our site does it show the journey that a user is expected to go through, from filling out a form to giving us money. We do not state buying factors that are important to sales reps to close deals such as # of seats or budget.

Landscape Analysis — Who we looked at

• Apple

• Oracle

• Cisco

• Microsoft

• IBM

Takeaways

Everyone’s approach to “how to buy” are different depending on how their products/services are structured and how granular they want to go. Highlighting what is necessary to differentiate the buying process will help users expectations and confidence. Having all contact/buying options together on one page could be overwhelming.

Definition — What are the requirements?

Main Focus

• What do users expect the experience to be like during the buying process?

• What factors affect the package/edition they choose?

• Different ways to give us money besides one call to action at the end of a pricing edition card.

Defined Requirements

Ways to convert:

• Free Trial

• Request Call / Quote

• Contact Us

• Live Chat

Setting expectations:

• Can I buy during the trial period or after its end?

• What payment method can I use?

• What’s included in my purchase?

• Can I upgrade and add-on other features later?

• How often will I receive a bill?

• Make it obvious that they are starting the buying process

Different products have different ways to buy

As you can see in the diagram below not all products have the same core offers. It is important to note that there are different available ways to purchase depending on which product the prospect is interested in.

Explorations — The different design approaches

As you can see there are differences in the buying process for Lightning Essentials and Commerce Cloud. Commerce Cloud does not have a free trial option to purchase from but the prospect will have to request a call.

Execution

A module that lives on pricing detail pages (e.g Sales Cloud Pricing Page)

• Being In-line with the content makes it seen during the thought process

e.g “I see all the different features and the edition I want, now how do I buy? Oh great there’s a module to tell me just that.”

• Content in this module can be tailored to the specific pricing page they’re on.

A button that opens a lightbox/tooltip on the detail pricing pages

• Doesn’t make our buying process scary (choice is demotivating and can be overwhelming) — Just give me the best option to buy!

• Can be used when needed.

Future State — E-Commerce Shopping Experience

This is approach involves added a brand new experience layer on top of the existing Salesforce pricing pages. This will require a lot more dev resources but we like to design for the future so we can build a conversation around the long term vision.

Enhanced Pricing Edition Cards by adding selectable editions and buying methods

• Makes pricing more interactive, which encourages more engagement to the page.

• Feels more closely to e-commerce add to cart/checkout mechanics

• Allows users to see all the available options for each of the pricing editions without leaving the page.

Opportunities from having content on a separate page

• Instead of taking them out of the buying journey to a new page, add the content inline with pricing details, which will give it more exposure and aid the buying journey.

• Prospects cannot convert on specific products without buying options and process expectations to their unique needs.

• This page would be unnecessary if we can make our existing pricing pages seem like prospects are starting the buying process.

• A typical user on Salesforce.com views 1.4 pages of our site. Could be a challenge for them to be brought back to pricing.