How 451 Increased Adoption of Its Research Platform With Whatfix

Interactive Walkthroughs

guide users to realize value from its online research platform, utilize advanced catalogue features, and enable frictionless content discovery.

Self-Service

empower users to self-discover these features and find the right resources quickly.

In-App Tooltips

highlight and explain changes and new features.

“Our experience with Whatfix overall was heavily positive. From the initial sales inquiry and feature review, to the implementation and partnering with the Professional Services team, everything went smoothly and to plan.”

Aaron St. George, Chief Innovation Officer at 451 Research

The 451 Research Story

The Challenge of Platform Adoption and Information Discovery

451 Research is a global research and advisory firm that analyzes the technologies, services, and companies that disrupt information technology. With a team of 100+ analysts and research organized into 13 Channels, 451 Research is renowned for high-quality and insightful research.

451 Research covers a wide range of topics with an extensive repository of reports, white papers, and articles made available to customers. Customers use its purpose-built research publishing and digestion platform to create research requests and self-search for information. However, sifting through the research to get to exactly what’s needed was turning out to be a time-consuming process for their customers. It hurts the user experience and defeats the purpose of having a self-service platform.

Aaron St. George, CIO, discovered that 451 Research customers needed more handholding to drive more platform adoption and new feature usage.

The Solution

Whatfix’s In-App Guidance & Self-Help Support

To support 451’s global user base, they had to find a way to guide users within the application with minimal dependence on external intervention. To solve this, Aaron crafted targeted user journeys utilizing specific features to provide the most efficient way to discover information using:

Advanced search filters.
Guidance on research category details.
Best practices of research content discovery.

Whatfix digital guidance helped actualize these user journeys in the 451 Research platform through:

Whatfix walkthroughs and self-service capabilities empower users to self-discover these features and find the right resources quickly.
Support content and tooltips embedded in online PDF guides help users navigate them effectively.
Beacons and tooltips that highlight and explain changes and new features.

The Results

A Powerful End-User Research Experience

The following have been the most significant positives in Aaron’s experience with Whatfix:

Ease of Integration: 451 Research used Whatfix through a JS embed model and found the integration easy.

Professional Services: Whatfix’s Professional Services Group was engaged to develop content. They not only provided very user-centric and prompt service but also gave expert consultation on how the Whatfix platform could be best utilized.

Flexibility: Whatfix works with a simple browser extension that can be used on any web-based application. This, combined with many different types of widgets and customization options, has helped Aaron elevate the user experience across all touchpoints.

451 Research would like to leverage more Whatfix personalization capabilities to create a tailored user experience based on role and function. Additionally, they plan to utilize the tool to help guide end-users in curated or specifically unique research for their needs.