The Role of UX Design in SMSBump's Growth and Acquisition by Yotpo

SMSBump have joined the Yotpo family and have secured themselves even more funding to keep developing their product – an innovative SMS marketing solution designed for eCommerce brands!

It’s been a very busy and exciting week here at Stan+Vision and apart from getting new projects in, we received these amazing news from our friends over at SMSBump!

Yotpo, on the other hand, is a leading eCommerce marketing platform that combines a full range of solutions for customer reviews, visual marketing, loyalty and referrals.

We still remember the day of our first meeting with Mihail from SMSBump back in 2019.
He had just launched his SMS marketing platform and was in need of some new web and app design in order to start converting. Even though they’d received discouraging feedback about their product being old-fashioned and slow, they still strongly believed in the data they had stumbled upon – SMSs had a 95% open rate.

It was time to make sure that their website and app could also perform as well as this by being to the point and succinct. We took on the challenge by doing thorough market research while having in mind that SMSBump’s key target audience were merchants working with Shopify, WooCommerce, OpenCart and other eCommerce platforms.
This meant that we were looking at creating a design that should be both international, yet very simple and with one key goal - conversions.

SMSBump before StanVision

The website Mihail came to us with was not that bad but it was definitely in need of improvement.

The previous design showed what the idea of SMSBump’s product was, how it would look like when clients would receive SMSs and what additional insights tools they had integrated. Nonetheless, it was still lacking a few key elements.

The task

All in all, the SMSBump client brief boiled down to solving one main problem - redesigning their website and product while still staying true to their brand identity and values. The StanVision team had the task of working out how to create a clearer and simpler user experience without making major changes to the SMSBump brand identity.

The process

Step 1: Research

Our approach was to start with a thorough and very broad competitor research so that we can identify trends and compile a detailed mood board. We were able to define keywords, tone of voice, brand colours and, most importantly, tweak the logo in order for it to have a more modern look.

Step 2: Logo redesign

We went from italics to simple, straight letters and cleaner lines.

Step 3: Telling a story

Then it was time to not only show off the product but to also start telling a story and we did that by working with talented illustrator Radostina Georgieva. She helped us maintain consistency in the UI of the SMSBump website by creating characters and design components that can be easily reused both for web and marketing purposes.

These playful illustrations draw users by conveying professionalism and trust in the product and brand. The key was to have a beautiful homepage that tells a story and makes the SMSBump brand stand out.

The result

By making the website comprehensive, easy to navigate, with unique design and focused on presenting product usage benefits and results, we were able to:

• Increase the conversion rate of SMSBump's landing page, get more users in, decrease their bounce rate and increase average session times.

A year later

Well, we must have done something terribly right!

Throughout the whole of 2019, SMSBump’s user base grew by 850% to 29,000 active stores and $100,000,000 in additional revenue for merchants. The startup also received a €200K seed investment from local VC Eleven Ventures but ended up not using any of the funds as their business started to grow and develop with rapid speed.

All of these amazing results were what attracted Yotpo (and 15 other VCs before them who got turned down) to invest in SMSBump and make them part of their growing eCommerce solutions family!

It’s been a long journey for the Bulgarian startup to go from an idea to a multimillion-dollar company and we are happy to have been there along the way!

Congratulations to Mihail and Georgi once again and we hope to see you soon!

"Couldn't' be happier with Stan Vision. We wanted our new website redesigned and delivered and they got started in a week. The whole process was very well organised and catered for. We were assigned an Account Manager who was on top of things all the time. I would definitely recommend them for anyone considering a professional design studio. As a matter of fact we still collaborate with them on a daily basis and delegate a huge part of our design work."

Mihail Stoychev, Founder and CEO of SMSBump

All the best from the Stan+Vision Team!