Case Study
Helping small businesses grow and compete with the bigger guys through simplified, automated advertising—no learning curve required.
Google Ads is incredibly powerful—but that power comes with complexity. For small business owners juggling a hundred responsibilities, learning a complex ad platform isn't realistic.
That's why we built Smart Campaigns: a campaign type that offers an automated ad experience with no learning curve. My mission was to help small advertisers grow their businesses and compete with the bigger guys.
Transformed a 13-step flow with 14.5% conversion into a streamlined experience.
Rebuilt the management experience to show what actually matters to small businesses.
Created auto-generated business pages for advertisers without websites.
13 steps. 14.5% conversion rate.
Our signup flow was long and repetitive. The visual design was outdated, the language was confusing, and it lacked proper guidance. We needed a complete overhaul.
From the drawing board to UX approval, we spent 4 months with 30+ iterations—testing and refining every step of the experience.
The old ad creation step had a 24% drop-off rate. Advertisers felt intimidated and didn't know what to write. The sample ad was irrelevant to their vertical, making it hard to relate.
We fixed this with auto-generated ad text suggestions, clear expectations about where ads would show, and more conversational language throughout.
15% of users dropped off at budget selection. Many tried to "test it out" with the lowest budget possible—which made their campaigns hard to succeed. Showing both views and clicks was confusing since we charge by clicks.
We introduced budget packages that offer stronger price anchors, and simplified to show only click estimates so users understand exactly what they're paying for.
Fully launched June 2020
Small advertisers didn't know what actions to take looking at their dashboard. As a result, our retention rate was low. They'd set up a campaign and then... never come back.
Small advertisers care less about fancy charts. They want to understand if "the ad is working," they want transparency to trust the product, and they want to know what actions to take to improve performance.
I explored different frameworks for a recommendation feed: gallery style, vertical feed, and horizontal style. We tested with advertisers at different stages and populated a set of cards customized for each business.
Ultimately, we decided to provide in-context recommendations at the right spots—showing relevant actions when and where users could actually take them.
Fully launched October 2020
How might we help advertisers create ads on the web without having a website?
Many small businesses—especially in emerging markets—wanted to advertise but didn't have a website to send traffic to. This was a significant barrier to entry.
We created an auto-generated business listing page with responsive loading, dynamic ordering, conversion tracking, and all the technical capabilities of a proper landing page.
The key insight was integrating this directly into the ad signup flow, minimizing the information advertisers need to provide. If they could describe their business, we could build them a page.
Full launch in Brazil, November 2020
Working on Smart Campaigns taught me that the best simplification isn't about removing features—it's about removing cognitive load. Small business owners don't have time to become advertising experts, but they do have goals they want to achieve. Our job was to bridge that gap.