When Daniel Quick joined Thought Industries as VP of Learning Strategies, he came in with ambitious goals for the LMS provider’s thought leadership. He wanted to create great content for current users, but — more importantly — he wanted to make sure they’d see it. Daniel knew that Thought Industries’ content was strong, but their in-app experience was static.
On top of that, Thought Industries was hosting COGNITION, its first fully remote conference for customer training (thanks, 2020!). Daniel and his team wanted to find a way to highlight content from the conference to increase engagement.
Ideally, he thought, he’d be able to publish new content to the user dashboard so that customers would see new and relevant information whenever they logged in. This would not only make the dashboard more engaging but also help them better utilize the Thought Industries platform. However, Daniel had no way to do this himself, and the engineering team didn’t have the time or resources to maintain anything so dynamic.
Fortunately, Daniel had been a Candu design partner from the very beginning. He knew this would be a great opportunity to kick the tires on Candu’s no-code web builder and create the dynamic dashboard of his dreams.
Daniel teamed up with Jessie Gold, Director of Product, and Alejandro Haydar, Lead UI/ UX Designer, to create a new, flexible dashboard that decoupled content creation from engineering sprints.
How the Flexible Dashboard Template Elevated Dynamic Content
Thought Industries’ original dashboard had been designed as a simple, friendly welcome page for admins. It was updated quarterly with release notes and had links to resources outside the app. It was a well-designed, set-it-and-forget-it page that was easy for engineering to maintain. From a user perspective, though, it only changed every few months. Moreover, there were real limitations to performance and content testing because any changes required involvement from dev.
Now, multiple cross-functional teams can push updates directly to users whenever they need to. A new section for thought leadership allows Daniel’s team to deliver helpful tips, while announcements on upcoming webinars and events keep content fresh. The release notes are still there, but now product marketing teams can simply draft up the notes directly in Candu and publish them when the time is right — without having to nag engineering! Best of all, Daniel’s team can quickly test out a variety of messages and posts to see what resonates with users.
Prior to using Candu, 4-6% of Thought Industry’s customers were accessing the company’s newly-designed knowledge center through the product, and now that figure has risen to over 30%. The new dashboard allowed Daniel’s team to direct users to the knowledge center, helping to double visits to the page immediately after its relaunch. More visits means more users interacting with content that gets them to value.
How to Get Started with Candu’s Flexible Dashboard Template
The Flexible Dashboard Template is designed to communicate useful, relevant updates directly with your end users. The focus is on sharing release notes and thought leadership to give a voice to your teams.
To get the most value from this template, you’ll first need to determine who owns what content. The template works best if each team develops a content calendar so that each section stays fresh. We recommend a full refresh at least once a quarter, but if your company is on a faster release cycle, add updates as often as you like. One of the goals of this template is to keep users on the lookout for new and interesting content, so updating frequently is key.
To get started:
- Compile the most useful content to place front and center.
- Add images if desired to make your messages pop.
- Include links so your users can go deeper on topics that interest them.
- When it’s time to share new features, blog posts, or releases, simply add a new card to the top, or edit an existing one.
Need more information on making the most of this template? Reach out to us!
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