CarbonInvoice
Positive Profiles
I designed profiles SMEs can share with their network or when submitting tenders. It's important that they can share their story through a verified third party.
Problem
SMEs want to share the number of trees they've funded or include more sustainability content in their tender submissions.
Solution
Build a profile that allows users to share their journey and impact.
Research, wireframing
& testing assumptions
Before launching CarbonInvoice, the team uncovered that businesses want to share their progress through a profile. We had a few assumptions of what users might want to showcase in their profile:
Number of native trees funded
Trees forecast
Number of invoices shared
Share their badge
To better understand what and how users want to share their sustainability journey, I put together some wireframes to test our assumptions.
Research results
From the research, we managed to find that the profiles are useful artefacts for "The Bragger" and "The Rigorous Professional". Each one has particular needs, but they overlap.
The Bragger
About
The Bragger is driven by status and obsessed with enhancing their brand image. They are always on the lookout for the next big marketing opportunity that will set their business apart and boost their reputation.
Behavioural Considerations
Have an effortless impact without having to do the heavy lifting;
Facing some procurement pressure.
Goals
Become a model company that stands for taking immediate positive action;
Create conversation points with clients;
Motivate and share the amount of trees and businesses they have successfully inspired to start their journey;
What do they need on the profile?
Share the number of native trees funded so far;
Share the forecast for the year;
Share where the trees are being planted;
Download a certificate;
Showcase relevant milestones
Where do they want to share?
Email signature;
Website;
Newsletter;
Badge.
The Rigorous Professional
About
The Rigorous Professional’s motivation to take action comes from their fear of losing a big customer. Whether they focus on growth and marketing, operations, finance, or bid management, their decisions are guided by the fear and anxiety of losing key customers and contracts.
Behavioural Considerations
Is facing procurement pressure;
Working to secure existing contracts by confidently addressing sustainability-related questions.
Goals
Avoid losing business and keep revenue by being able to answer sustainability and social procurement questions;
Look for a trusted third party certification, because they are rigorous and professional.
What do they need on the profile?
Share their impact on their Positive Profile as a procurement piece;
Share in more detail their impact in the Positive Business Certificate.
What do they want to share?
Tender submission;
Website.
User Story Mapping
With the new findings, it was important to prioritise user needs by product release. However, we couldn't deliver everything users needed at once, so we did it in phases. Moreover, given that we didn't have enough dev resources, we had to condense the needs of both personas into a single profile.
Content structure
& ideation
Based on the tech and manpower we had, it was decided to move forward with a general profile that fulfills the needs of both personas.
Some of the UT findings after testing them with 6 users:
Release 1: MVP
& Usability testing results
Based on the tech and manpower we had, it was decided to move forward with a general profile that fulfills the needs of both personas.
Some of the UT findings after testing them with 6 users:
60% of users would share the profile;
Users enjoyed a more storytelling approach to the profile;
Some clients aren’t sharing carbon and trees in their invoices;
2/6 clients would like to show progress over time
Specify they’re planting NZ/Aussie native trees
5/6 clients would like to have more information on the actual trees being funded
4/6 mention liking the visuals of the map
Some customers want to have a connection to their official website from the Positive Profile
Release 2:
Hi-Fi Prototypes & Results
Soon after we launched the first version we ran a few more experiments to understand how we could incorporate the following items:
Positive Business Certificate;
Native trees leaderboard;
Positive Power (Referrals) results.
This version of the profile was up for nearly 2 years.
Results and insights
After nearly 2 years of having the profiles live, here's what we found out. Data timeframe: July 29, 2023 – June 18, 2025.
01
17.1k visitors
Between 29 July 2023 and 18 June 2025.
02
289 certificate downloads
The certificate was downloaded 289 times by 188 users.
03
94.6% is direct traffic – low engagement rate of 10%
A lot of profiles are attached to customer invoices, hence why it is really high. The problem here is that users looking through invoices have a job to do, so they don't have a lot of time to explore the profiles.
04
1.37% is organic traffic – 34.8% engagement rate
Even though the organic traffic is low, users tend to spend more time exploring the profiles.
05
Some church happening due to the lack of visibility on native trees
Some customers decided to stop using the product due to there not being enough information on the locations of the trees beyond the amount. Users need proof that their trees are actually being funded.
Release 3:
Requirements
This project was picked up again by the Growth Hacker after nearly 2 years of not making any updates.
For this release were focused on providing customers additional value. Goals of the experiment traced by the Growth Hacker and I:
Increase visibility on native trees locations;
Segment the profiles by personas – The Rigorous Professional and The Bragger;
Add customer achievements and milestones with content they've shared or tenders won;
Make the profiles look and feel more serious;
Include real imagery from Planting Action Days.
Hi-Fi Prototypes:
The Rigorous Professional
I designed a profile for "The Rigorous Professional" and another one for "The Bragger". I took a modular approach to the designs given that a lot of the information needed on them is similar, but needs to be rearranged differently in order to fulfil specific needs.
Hi-Fi Prototypes:
The Bragger
Braggers are driven by status and are obsessed with enhancing their brand image, which is why they don't need a big emphasis on procurement-related content. They need enough to showcase that they actually measured their carbon footprint and the remainder of the profile should make them look good.
Reflecting
& evaluating
The final implementation of the profile ended up being different from the original scope we initially defined. The Growth Hacker made a hard stop on production (their time on the team was up), which didn't give the team enough time to: do some QA and for there to be any chance of fixing bugs.
Implement segmented profiles – he kept the original general profile;
Do a proper QA to identify improvements;
Fix bugs on the final implementation.
From analysing the current implementation I gathered some improvements:
Fix paddings on the cards
The cards are not following the paddings I defined on the hi-fi designs. It makes the design look broken, which doesn't provide the professional look we were aiming for.
Fix missing images on the plantation locations
Some plantation cards have missing images. It's important to fix these so that users can get the evidence they need that the trees are actually being planted.
Fix paddings on the planting projects card
The cards are not following the paddings I defined on the hi-fi designs. It makes the design look broken, which doesn't provide the professional look we were aiming for.
Fix stroke on profile images
The final implementation didn't follow the border stoke I defined. This is a problem when we have profile images that use a white background.
Fix icon size and placemenet
Both icons are too big for the size of the button and the share icon on the "Share profile" button has some unecessary bottom padding.
Fix intractable cards with hover states that don't lead the users anywhere
A hover state was created even though the card with more information about the plantations was deprioritise. It is misleading towards visitors, as the cards won't lead them anywhere.
