The Next-Level Tourney
How do you inspire a vast network of dealers to champion a single brand of auto parts? We did it in March!
By harnessing the excitement of March Madness, we created the Next-Level Tourney – an innovative campaign that boosts performance and builds brand loyalty through sports-themed competition. Our team designed a custom website for 25,000 dealers to track live updates, sales data, and competitive rankings.
Page views
Active interactions
Dealers realized the profit margin increase on the BProAuto parts
Dealers found the platform easy to use
With no product manager, our design and development teams collaborated closely and rapidly iterated in agile sprints to come up strategy and build the platform from 0 to 1.
3 Months
Product Designer
2 Product Designers
1 Creative Director
1 Account Manager
1 Project Manager
1 Copywriter
3 Developers
I played the key role in driving design process, developed the strategy, and ensured successful implementation.
Background and Challenge
BProAuto, a new and innovative auto parts brand, approached our agency with a challenge: they needed a campaign to boost dealer awareness and sales. Our agency envisioned a March Madness-style contest for selling parts—an exciting opportunity to innovate. However, innovation often comes with unknowns and challenges.
With a tight 3-month deadline, no prior experience in this area, and no product manager, we have to turn this vision into reality and building this platform from scratch. This wasn't just a one-off campaign; it was laying the groundwork for a potential annual event. We had the opportunity to set a new benchmark in the automobile industry.
Comparative Analysis
We began with just one creative idea and a blank slate. No specific requirements, no clear direction. So, we dove into research to chart our course. My fellow UX designer and I studied successful tournament bracket platforms like CBS, NCAA, ESPN, and Yahoo to gain inspiration and identify common features and UX patterns. These insights formed the foundation of our strategy and became our guiding light:
Competition
Use gamification strategies, including leaderboards and predictions, to foster a competitive spirit and motivate users to participate actively.
Engagement
Design interactive elements that draw users back frequently, such as real-time updates and clickable details, to maintain high engagement levels.
Clarity
Implement a structured, minimalistic bracket design to simplify complex data, allowing users to easily follow the competition's progression without feeling overwhelmed.
Inclusivity
Design for multiple devices with features like zooming, scrolling, and printable versions to cater to all users.
User Needs and Motivation
Traditional March Madness brackets didn't fit our unique dealer scenario. With no time for direct interviews, we tapped into our Account team's expertise to uncover critical dealer needs.
By aligning user insights with our campaign goals, we transformed this campaign into a powerful business intelligence tool. This strategic pivot not only enhanced our client's brand reputation but also provided dealers with essential insights to optimize their operations. The result was a significant boost in sales and profitability, driving better business outcomes.
1
Know the Rules, Win Big
Dealers needed transparent participation rules and reward systems. This clarity would not only motivate better performance but also allow managers to align team expectations and implement effective, performance-based bonuses.
2
Real-Time Data-Driven Sales Strategy
Dealers need access to detailed, real-time sales data on individual parts, inventory, and trends. This empowers them to optimize stock and quickly adapt strategies to maximize sales. However, those information was scattered across multiple systems. Permission issues often led to time-consuming data requests, significantly impacting decision-making speed.
3
Learn Performance and Market Standing
Dealers lacked access to competitors' sales data, hindering their ability to gauge their market position. This information was crucial for dealers to understand industry trends, forecasting demand, and strengthening negotiating positions with suppliers and customers.
Diverge and Converge
When we brought the valuable insights back to the team, we quickly decided on 3 key HMWs to focus on and held a brainstorming workshop. However, we soon faced an overload of ideas and differing opinions, leading to endless discussions that made it difficult to make decisions or clarify our direction.
Recognizing our timeline was at risk, I introduced the decision matrix and reminded the team of key principles we agreed on from our research analysis to streamline the solution.
I then took initiative to created a sitemap and page flow, providing a visual reference to keep everyone aligned and helping our copywriter start content creation early to save time.
Challenge 1
Solution - Bracket Overview Page
Dealers need to quickly understand their team's position, progress, and potential rewards, whether on personal devices or for team presentations. The bracket system transforms complex sales competitions into an engaging visual story. Using a familiar tournament layout, dealers quickly align with the mental model. It enables them to grasp competition status and incentives at a glance, serving as an effective tool for goal-setting and team motivation.
Responsive Design
Dealers are constantly on the move meeting vendors, clients, and customers. They will use mobile or ipad to stay updated on the sales competition in real-time. Our full bracket view worked great on large screens but became cluttered and unreadable on small screens.
Quadrant Navigation system for smaller screen
I enhance readability with intuitive quadrant navigation, allowing dealers to focus on one region at a time. They can easily swipe between columns to find their team's position and upcoming matches without feeling overwhelmed.
Bridging mobile and desktop
Recognizing the benefits of this focused view, I brought Quadrant Navigation to desktop and iPad screens. On larger screens, it acts as an interactive map within the full view, allowing dealers to maintain context while easily jumping to specific sections.
Challenge 2
Iterations Highlight 1 - Team Competition Data
Faced with complex competition data reporting, our collaboration with the technical team merged innovative design solutions with feasible implementation, enabling efficient development with minimal revisions.
Design A: Side-by-Side Layout
✅ Design B: Tabbed Layout
Design B was chosen to avoid the excessive loading times and slow response on the screen of a side-by-side layout. The tabbed design loads data for one team at a time, allowing dealers to explore team sales on their own.
Solution - Team Competition Page
The team competition dashboard centralizes real-time sales data, enabling dealers to directly compare team performance through clear metrics and interactive product breakdowns. The countdown timer and performance tracking create healthy competition, motivating teams to monitor trends.
Iterations Highlight 2 - Dealer Data Deep Dive
Understanding sales data is crucial for dealers, but how data is presented can make or break its effectiveness.
Initially, I used a line chart (Design A) to highlight sales trends over time. However, internal testing revealed visual clutter and cognitive overload due to overlapping trend lines. Dealers found it difficult to compare performance across channels at a glance.
Design A: Line Chart without total sales and target
✅ Design B: Bar Chart with Line Trend
To address this, I pivoted to bar chart (Design B), which better aligns with dealers' primary needs—understanding weekly sales composition and comparing performance across different channels. This new visualization presents Used Car, Wholesale, and Retail sales side by side, enabling quick comparisons. The addition of total sales and target lines provides crucial context for overall performance and goal tracking.4o
Solution - Dealer Profile Page
Dealers struggled with fragmented data, making it hard to compare performance, track trends, and adjust strategies in real time. The sales dashboard centralizes key insights, including weekly breakdowns, growth rates, seasonal sales trends, and channel contributions. This intuitive visualization enables dealers to quickly compare performance, identify opportunities, and optimize strategies—driving better inventory planning and sales growth.
Challange 3
Design Iterations Highlight
Clear market standing provides a benchmark for measuring success, allowing dealers to set realistic goals and develop effective strategies to improve their position in the competitive auto parts industry.
Initially, our team was satisfied with a simple data table and ranking system. It met basic requirements, but I saw an opportunity for improvement. I wondered, "How can i make this more engaging and truly inspire a competitive spirit?"
Solution - Sales Performance Insights
By Integrating data visualization into the table. I designed a bar chart comparing each dealer's sales to the average, with expandable rows showing the previous 4 weeks of sales data. Dealers could now quickly gauge their standing and see exactly how much they were leading or lagging behind the market average within their community. Combined with historical sales trends, dealers have a tool for strategy evaluation to test whether their sales strategy has been working in the past weeks.
Solution - Leaderboard
In the final month, competition heats up as dealers compete for the top spot within their team. The leaderboard showcases the leading dealer, inspiring others and driving higher sales. Dealers can see their sales gap to the wining leader, which fuels their competitive spirit.
When dealers see this ad banner, they’re entering the final round, a crucial moment. The instant feedback from the leaderboard boosts their confidence and excitement, pushing them to achieve even more.
Learnings
The BProAuto brand now ranks among the dealer platform's top 3. The Next-Level Tourney campaign was a resounding success, significantly boosting brand awareness, engagement, and sales.
Our post-campaign survey revealed high dealer satisfaction, with constructive feedback guiding our plans for more iterations and an even stronger campaign next year.
It was fun to team up and compete, with individual battles adding excitement.
The site is very user-friendly and easy to follow.
The profit margin on BProAuto was a pleasant surprise.
I lost interest after being out in the first week.