Semrush Product Dashboards Relaunch

Semrush is a mature product. Over the 13 years of its existence, it has become the market leader in solutions for marketers. To resolve a number of technical issues that have been impeding its further growth, my team and I have revised the Semrush main product dashboards. 2021 release

Goal

To switch to a new codebase without interrupting the business.

Challenges

We had to completely rewrite three products. There was no documentation, so we had to do reverse-engineering.
Resolving UX issues that made it difficult for new users of the product while explaining the benefits of the new interface to existing users.
At the time, the company was preparing for its IPO so we had to make sure our product performance was not impacted by the changes. I followed the principle of «Do no harm!»

My contribution

Conducted a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative research on user behavior with the help of my colleagues from the UX Research and the Analytics teams.
Came to grips with the old system, and set correct technical requirements for the new version.
Designed and launched a number of complex split tests for different categories of users to ensure that the new version doesn’t affect the business metrics.
Together with the development team, I created technical documentation to make the knowledge of the system available to everyone in the company.

Results

The main product pages loaded 70% faster.
We had 99.9% positive response from existing users following the introduction of the new interface.
Product metrics (1st payment conversion, MRR, Retention, Upgrade rate, etc.) have not been impacted.
Technical problems are no longer a barrier for product development.

Semrush at the New York Stock Exchange. Photo by Semrush and Olga Andrienko.