TUXT connects consumers, brands, & influencers through SMS

TUXT is an SMS campaign management platform that seamlessly connects consumers to brands. Consumers can purchase merchandise via text while brands can create, manage and track SMS-based sales campaigns, integrate with already established stores (Shopify, etc.) and white-label their own E-Commerce stores.

Lead UX & Design — Matthew Whiting

Designers — Sean BossardEt, Trevor Tillery

The Challenges

Volume-based SMS text messaging is expensive, so this platform controls costs by enabling advanced segmentation and automation features to optimize the SMS texting process.

For consumers, TUXT needed to design a simple and intuitive platform that allows users to make purchases from their favorite brands via text message. For brands, TUXT needed a customizable campaign management system that allows for creation and maintenance of SMS campaigns while incorporating e-commerce functionality that manages financial transactions.

The Process

Our team utilized our Design Impact Workshop to build consensus around the goals of the business, identify product challenges and map out the objectives of the engagement. By acknowledging the user’s pain points and the business objectives we were able to determine a series of UX touchpoints that we could translate into product features. We then used R.I.C.E. charts to prioritize these features and estimate scope. Working with the client we began creating user flows, UX comps, prototypes and high fidelity designs. Client conferences and user testing allowed us to revise and refine the product until we achieved our objectives.

I led multiple discovery workshops with stakeholders and end-users to determine the project goals, core problem statements, personas, user needs, journey maps, feature sets, R.I.C.E. prioritizations and design estimations.

Core Challenge 1: Mass Texting is Expensive

A core challenge of this product is the expensive nature of volume-based SMS text messaging. We countered this obstacle by designing the ability to group users into targeted segments, funnel those segments into specific SMS flows and track the engagement of the segmented users within the flows. This allowed brands to spend less money and achieve greater conversions using segment-focused SMS campaigns.

A brand can create a new segment of users or choose from a list of already created segments. Once a campaign is initiated the user can track the success within individual segments and alter their strategy accordingly.

An excerpt of user flows from our segmentation feature set.

Core Challenge 2: Automating Campaigns

The Flow Builder feature allows the seller to easily construct automations that respond to the consumers’ interactions within their active SMS campaigns. Automations become templates that can be applied and customized to fit a multitude of campaigns.

Select screens from the Automation feature set.

Core Challenge 3: Tying It All Together

Creating and managing multiple complex campaigns with potentially thousands of end users is a big job. The system that facilitates this needs to be as intuitive and easy to use as possible. I authored a design system that sought to be clean, elegant and modular. I wanted to create equity across the platform by establishing consistent patterns and repeated design conventions. The ultimate goal was to reduce the cognitive load of the end user so they can focus on creating and maintaining effective SMS campaigns.

Conclusion

Our team worked with TUXT to make shopping simple. Just respond when you see something you like and it’ll be shipped right to your door. Create, manage and analyze SMS campaigns from a single application that also acts as an e-commerce platform.