In late 2016, Audible decided to explore the B2B market. The target audience ranges from corporate, education, health care to public sectors. It was an ambitious yet promising business investment that took a dedicated team to realize. The team reached out to me in 2017.I was deeply fascinated by the mission and complexity of this challenge, as well as the talented and passionate people I’ve met. Therefore I decided to join the and helped the team build a series of products from ground up.
The target clients range from corporate, education, health care, public sector to correctional settings(ex. prison.) For each client there were multiple user types, such as end-listener, team manager, administrator and team leaders.
Audible had never offer a business and all-you-can-listen services. It was very different behavior and model with little to no Audible precedence.
Even though Audible has been an extremely successful business, this new business approach did not guarantee success. The goal is to see Audible for Business' potential in a concrete way with real clients and users.
With the effort of the whole team, Audible for business grew in client number, revenue and team size. With the business success, these platforms are continuously being iterated and innovated to create more business opportunities.
Products in 2+ years
Clients in 2+ years
nd insights to help us turn the steering wheel and kick off another strategic attempt.
In 2020, Audible launched Audible Stories, a free web platform, to support parents of children who couldn't go to school due to COVID-19 with learning and entertainment resources. The site used the Audible for Business end-listener platform developed by the team in 2016.
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At the start of the project, each sub-team had their own unique priorities and goals. It was difficult to align on priorities and create actionable plans based solely on conceptual discussions. To address this, I created experience maps to visualize these concepts and brought them to cross-functional meetings as often as possible. This helped the team clearly see which features were most important and allowed us to delve into more detailed feature-level user flows for discussion.
Once we determined that the end-listener platform would be our first MVP, we needed to narrow down the broad experience map to specific user actions and touch points. We used feature-specific user flows to identify the detailed steps and necessary artifacts that needed to be built and the responsible teams for each.
Since we had limited knowledge of our customers, it was necessary to test features before fully committing to them in order to gain enough confidence. With a tight timeline and a small team, we had to try various efficient methods to gather results, such as bringing in customers, interviewing potential clients, speaking with the sales/client success team, or testing with customer support.
In our rush to ship quickly, it was easy to compromise the user experience. To prevent this, I made it my mission to ensure that the broader team always included experience design in their planning strategy, rather than as an afterthought. I also realized the importance of sharing design plans with cross-functional partners. This not only helped establish a shared understanding of resource allocation, but also gave the team an idea of what to expect in terms of timelines and design approach.
One example of a qualitative method we used was when we built the discovery function. We took the design to Success Academies (a school) and tested it on faculty and students. The performance was not ideal, and users found it confusing. After further investigation, we realized that the issue wasn't with the design, but rather with the content structure. Instead of identifying reading levels by grade, students preferred to be identified by reading level, which was a more accurate way to gauge reading ability. With this insight, we were able to quickly change the content structure and prevent a failed launch.
There were some incidents that pushed us to be more data-driven. In the first few months after launching the end-listener platform, the sign-up rate was lower than expected. The team met to brainstorm solutions, but we were unable to reach an agreement on what to do. Since the sign-up flow was multi-step, we couldn't diagnose the problem without looking at usage data. Therefore, I partnered with the product manager to identify the pain point. Once we found out that emails had the lowest conversion rate, we updated the email design and conducted a live A/B test to iteratively find the right solution.
After having defined a few options, we started showing prototypes to clients and testing them out on testing sites. Once certain features were validated, I could start refining the designs are started building a more detailed design system for further development.
With the effort of the whole team, Audible for business grew in client number, revenue and team size. With the business success, these platforms are continuously being iterated and innovated to create more business opportunities.
Products in 2+ years
Clients in 2+ years
In 2020, Audible launched Audible Stories, a free web platform, to support parents of children who couldn't go to school due to COVID-19 with learning and entertainment resources. The site used the Audible for Business end-listener platform developed by the team in 2016.
