Redesigning a B2B Review Platform for Growth and Discoverability.
Redesigned and scaled GoodFirms, a B2B review and ratings platform, with a focus on SEO, user experience, and organic growth. Over six years, I led end to end product design, introduced software listings, designed business management tools, and grew the design team to support the platform’s evolution.
Overview
GoodFirms is a B2B research and review platform that helps businesses discover, compare, and evaluate service providers and software products through company listings, ratings, and reviews.
I joined the GoodFirms team at OpenXcell in 2018 as the Lead UI/UX Designer. Initially, I was the only designer on the project, responsible for redesigning the platform's visual experience while ensuring the design supported its primary growth channel, organic search.
Over more than six years, my role expanded beyond website design to include the business portal, software listings, marketing design, and brand identity. As the team grew, I took on additional responsibilities, mentoring designers and managing the design team. In 2022, I was promoted to Assistant Design Manager.
GoodFirms needed a website redesign that improved its visual experience while supporting its SEO driven growth strategy. The challenge was to make company listings easier to discover and evaluate through organic search, maintain a consistent user experience across the platform, and build a foundation that could support future expansion.
I redesigned the platform with a focus on SEO, information architecture, and usability. I improved the presentation of company listings, designed the business portal for profile management, and later introduced software listings to expand the platform's offering. Alongside product design, I also handled marketing design and branding, helping maintain consistency across the platform as it evolved.
User Research & Discovery
Understanding the Platform and Its Growth Strategy
When I joined GoodFirms in 2018, the platform was already operating as a B2B review and ratings website. My primary responsibility was to redesign its visual experience while ensuring the design supported its most important growth channel, organic search.
I needed to understand how businesses discovered service providers, evaluated company profiles, and used reviews to make decisions. At the same time, I had to consider how the website's structure and content presentation supported SEO and organic discoverability.
This established the foundation for a redesign that balanced user experience, search visibility, and long term scalability.
Key Research Insights
Organic Discoverability Matters
The platform's growth depended heavily on Google search, making information architecture, page structure, and content hierarchy important considerations throughout the redesign.
Simplify Company Evaluation
Visitors needed an intuitive way to explore company profiles, understand ratings, read reviews, and compare relevant information to make informed decisions when choosing service providers.
Design for Future Expansion
The platform needed a flexible structure that could support new categories and features in the future without compromising consistency across the overall experience.
Competitor Analysis
I examined the competitive landscape to understand how established B2B platforms presented company information, ratings, reviews, and software listings. These references helped inform the design direction and identify relevant patterns for GoodFirms.
Competitor for Business Listing
Clutch
B2B platform for discovering companies through client reviews and ratings.
DesignRush
Agency directory helping businesses find and compare service providers.
Competitor for Software Listing
Capterra
Software discovery platform for comparing products, ratings, and reviews.
G2 Crowd
Software review platform helping businesses compare products through user feedback.
Product Goal
The design direction focused on making information easier to navigate, creating a consistent experience across page types, and supporting the platform's evolving requirements.
User Goals
- • Find relevant company and software information.
- • Evaluate service providers using ratings and reviews.
- • Navigate listings and profiles efficiently.
Business Goals
- • Support organic discovery.
- • Improve the browsing experience.
- • Maintain a scalable platform structure.
Information Architecture
The information architecture needed to establish clear relationships between categories, listings, and detailed pages. The goal was to help visitors navigate the platform logically while maintaining a consistent structure across its different page types.
Lo-fi Wireframes
Wireframes helped establish the placement of key information and the structure of individual pages before visual refinement. The focus was on creating clear layouts that made information easy to scan and supported consistent page patterns.
Final Designs
After refining the information architecture and page layouts, I translated the design direction into high fidelity interfaces across GoodFirms. The final designs focused on improving information hierarchy, simplifying company and software discovery, and maintaining a consistent experience across the platform's key pages.
Homepage
The homepage serves as the primary entry point to GoodFirms, introducing the platform and helping visitors discover relevant companies and software. The design focuses on presenting key information clearly while making the main discovery paths easy to navigate.
Company Listing & Detail Page
Company listing pages help visitors explore service providers, while detail pages provide a deeper look at individual companies. The layouts organize company information, ratings, and reviews to support comparison and informed decision making.
Navigation Menu
I restructured the navigation to organize GoodFirms' extensive categories, industries, and location-based listings into a clear hierarchy. The goal was to make information easier to discover while keeping the main navigation manageable and supporting the platform's SEO requirements.
Software Listing & Detail Page
Software listing pages help visitors discover relevant products, while detail pages present product information in a structured format. The experience extends GoodFirms beyond service provider discovery into software research and comparison.
Usability Test
The final designs were tested with cross-functional team members within the organization who were unfamiliar with GoodFirms. Their feedback helped identify areas where the navigation, information hierarchy, and overall experience could be clearer for first-time visitors. Based on their observations, we refined the designs to make the platform more intuitive and easier to navigate.
Iteration Based on SEO Requirements
We continuously iterated on the website to adapt to Google's evolving SEO requirements and improve organic search rankings. These iterations ranged from redesigning entire pages to making smaller adjustments, such as rearranging sections, refining page layouts, and updating content to improve relevance and discoverability.
Through ongoing experimentation and refinement, we saw GoodFirms achieve the #1 position in Google search results for several business categories in the US and India for almost two years. This experience reinforced the importance of treating SEO as an ongoing process, where design, content, and information structure evolve together to improve search visibility.
Key Insights
Google Search Rankings
GoodFirms achieved top Google rankings for several business categories in the US and India for almost two years through continuous SEO focused improvements.
Monthly Revenue Growth
Monthly revenue increased from $50,000+ in 2018 to $300,000+ in 2021 as GoodFirms expanded its business.
Growth in Daily Visitors
Daily visitors grew from 3,000 in 2018 to 25,000 in 2021, reflecting the platform's growth during my tenure.
Learning
Working on GoodFirms for over six years taught me that product design goes beyond visual improvements. It requires balancing user experience, SEO, and business goals while continuously adapting to the platform's evolving needs.
Design for Discoverability
SEO and UX need to work together. Information architecture, content hierarchy, and page structure can influence how users discover and navigate a platform.
Iterate for Continuous Growth
Small adjustments to layouts, content, and page structures can be as important as major redesigns. Continuous iteration helped us adapt to changing SEO requirements and improve search visibility.
Grow Beyond Design
Starting as the sole designer and eventually managing a team taught me to balance hands-on design work with mentoring, collaboration, and maintaining consistency as the product grows.
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