ZoomInfo embarked on a major redesign of ZoomInfo Pro, their premier tool for prospecting and recruiting, as well as their public website which included a free version of ZoomInfo’s search capability. The redesign included comprehensive enhancements to usability, messaging and site identity. The complexity of the project required innovative UI thinking and resulted in major improvements to the overall quality of the product offering.

Accolades

After the redesign, ZoomInfo Pro won a SIIA CODiE Award for Best Directory & Business Leads Service. SIIA CODiE judges who reviewed ZoomInfo Pro remarked that the software-as-a-service (SaaS) application — which provides access to the ZoomInfo™ Database of five million businesses and 50 million businesspeople, plus unique search, export and alert tools — was “very easy to use,” yet includes “powerful search options … (e.g., the ability to search across multiple fields, such as articles, to find people, rather than simply searching by company name or job title).”

Redesigning the Search Experience

ZoomInfo Pro has powerful search capabilities across people and company databases to create targeted lists for sales and recruiting. The existing user interface was overly complex and required training to use. The search controls were not well laid out or well labeled. A major drawback was that searching  people and searching company data used separate interfaces. We wanted to see if we could unify them into one shared interface and to simplify the tool as much as possible without losing any of its power, eliminate the need for training and improve usability overall.

 Logical Groupings of Criteria

We grouped and categorized search criteria with the most common criteria always available on top and the more advanced options organized into three expandable windows. Within these windows a useful feature for remembering selected criteria was developed.

Unifying Search for People and Companies

We realized that with some creative problem solving we could unify the search experience across people and companies so that users could easily tab across to either people or company results as desired.

Bye Bye Button

We removed the search button completely from the experience, providing results instantly as criteria is keyed. A few months later Google did the same thing, giving a very satisfying experience of immediate feedback/results when searching (great minds thinking alike).

Free Search as an Introduction to the Service

ZoomInfo had always used their public site as a gateway to the Pro tool by offering for free, a simple people and company search. But the experience on the public site had always been a keyword search while Pro had always been a much more feature rich but difficult to use tool. Now with a newly designed Pro tool that was user friendly enough to not require any training, it was possible to essentially replicate the pro experience on the public site with features turned off until sign up. Thus ZoomInfo could now provide first hand experience of the tool to their public site visitors.

In addition a new visual design was implemented with a simple clutter free layout and a new color palette. Home page and upsell messaging positioning zoomInfo and providing a call to action were developed. Check out ZoomInfo here at http://www.zoominfo.com

Update 2015

In the four years since the redesign, The user experience design work done for ZoomInfo Pro is still in use. The public site no longer offers simple search capabilities and takes a different approach to selling Pro.