B2B | SaaS
Avalara Integration Studio for Developers
The Integration Studio offers a low-code/no-code platform tailored for software engineers and developers tasked with automating Sales & Use tax calculations across diverse source platforms and accounting systems.
Company
Avalara
Role
UX Designer
Duration
Jan 2020 - Jun 2021
Context
About
The Integration Studio is a low-code/no-code platform designed for software engineers and developers who need to automate Sales & Use tax calculations across different platforms and accounting systems. It uses Avalara’s own tax calculation APIs to easily connect with existing systems, delivering accurate, automated tax calculations without manual work.
Business problem
Utilise Avalara’s existing API services to accelerate integration development.
Create a new revenue stream with the studio by offering value-added services to partners and their customers.
Improve operational efficiency for partner systems while also opening up additional revenue opportunities.
Design timeline
Research
I conducted interviews with software engineers and developers from various source platform teams (including Shopify, WooCommerce, Microsoft Dynamics, etc.) whose primary responsibilities involve building integrations with third-party applications using defined APIs and documentation.
Primary research
We conducted in-depth user interviews to capture firsthand experiences, frustrations, and expectations with Avalara’s developer website, focusing on how users access, use, and build integrations with the provided tax APIs and documentation.
Sample size
7+ participants
Interview structure
Semi-structured interviews lasting approximately 45 minutes, allowing for both guided questions and open-ended responses to gather qualitative insights.
Focus areas
How users interact with the existing Avalara Developer website, their use of various APIs, and the challenges or frustrations they face when building integrations.
Some qualitative insights
“It currently takes me 6-8 months just to build one simple extractor with using Avalara's couple of main APIs for Quickbooks. This is slowing down my process, plus there's a heavy documentation with each API to understand what it is and how it works.”
“I don’t want to build anything from scratch for this as I have my adapters ready for building integrations and my main focus is on scaling Shopify. And, I also do not want to waste much time reading the dev documentation except certain guides on how to use the tax APIs.”
“Can we scale our business by building the extractors with the help of your service and selling these customized integrations as per our customers’ requirements?”
Defining - User Persona and the Problem
I conducted interviews with software engineers and developers from various source platform teams (including Shopify, WooCommerce, Microsoft Dynamics, etc.) whose primary responsibilities involve building integrations with third-party applications using defined APIs and documentation.
Ideation
I have iterated through different kinds of solutions to design and build a seamless Studio experience where developers can create integrations using Avalara's APIs seamlessly without any heavy load. For which, I have created multiple IAs and wireframes throughout the process. Below are the final versions of IA and the wireframe of the Integration Studio.
Design solution
Based on several iterations and internal A/B tests, we finally came up with an experience catering to Developer's needs. Some of the highlights include,
Build an integration in 4-easy steps!
Step-by-step guide helps user in building integrations faster and uplifts their behavior as they see it comprises of only 4 steps.
Users can also see their progress of building an integration through the guide and can see whether submitted integration is approved or rejected.
Use existing adapter code or create a new one
Make available the use of existing adapter codes.
Built a back-end functionality to adopt to user’s existing lines of code to be added onto editor along with using their existing authentication methods.
Field mapping - the game changer!
Designed the field mapping experience from the ground up to help developers and engineers use their existing adapters.
Enabled easy authentication and straightforward mapping of data points from source systems to Avalara API data points.
Supported adding external functions during mapping to meet specific data requirements.
Ensured seamless, accurate, and efficient data flow between systems and Avalara’s APIs for precise tax and return calculations on shared transactions.
Final prototypes
Adapter creation flow
Building a new integration within minutes!
Results and learnings
We achieved some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with the release of the first Beta version.
80%
User engagment
>65%
Reduction in integration build-time
3-5 weeks
Time-to-complete-task
What users liked
Leveraging existing adapter codes to build an integration.
Field mapping experience which reduced their time-to-build an integration from 6-8 months to 3-5 weeks.
Less API documentation support needed, but was required.
What users suggested
Multi-programming-language support for creating an adapter.
Explanation needed on the Avalara API data points in the field mapping to choose the right one to map with.
API documentation integration with the studio builder to understand about the API and its workflows.
