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kayla lake
.
Turning User Behavior into
Better Experiences at GoDaddy

What I did

In this project, I used behavioral data to drive adoption, improve team alignment, and involve insights into meaningful user-research-driven improvements.

  • Led the adoption of FullStory on my team to understand where users struggled, hesitated, or dropped off when using GoDaddy products
  • Identified usability issues and areas of friction by observing real user behavior
  • Learned how to use Fullstory reporting tools and facilitated bi-weekly "Watch Parties" to share my knowledge and help my team learn more about user behavior
  • Interpreted findings and documented outcomes to ensure our discoveries led to real UI fixes and UX improvements
  • Used "watch parties" to help engineers and designers feel more connected to the customers they were building for, making pain points tangible and motivating stronger commitment to the work

Why it mattered

This work helped give GoDaddy users a voice in product decisions. ✨

By observing user behavior together, I helped my team move beyond assumptions and metrics to understand where our GoDaddy users struggled or hesitated. The outcomes of this project improved the usability, polished the visual design and addressed real user needs across multiple GoDaddy products.

Tools I used

FullStory

Figma

Confluence/JIRA

Role

Sr. UX Designer, GoDaddy

WHAT IS FULLSTORY?

Fullstory is a digital experience intelligence platform that captures and replays user sessions, allowing teams to see exactly what their users are doing and where they might be encountering issues or struggling to complete tasks.

Using FullStory to Observe User Behavior

Every other week, I led a "Watch Party 🎉" meeting where my team and I observed recorded user sessions via Fullstory. Together, we watched real customers use the tools we built, which helped us identify behavior patterns, usability issues, and opportunities to refine the experience. The timeline below shows how this repeatable session structure kept discussions focused, engaging, and actionable.

Session workflow diagram showing collaborative process flow

Parsing through our Findings

I categorized our discoveries and partnered with stakeholders, both on my own team and beyond, to share findings and coordinate fixes. This process led to consistent UI improvements across multiple products, helped streamline key user journeys, and increased the application of GoDaddy's design language.

Fullstory session workflow showing documentation, logging, classification and sharing process

Turning Insights into Results

GoDaddy ad creation interface showing user interaction patterns during the image selection process

Observation

Reviewing FullStory sessions revealed that users frequently clicked the ad preview while selecting an image, attempting to edit written content earlier than the flow allowed. This behavior signaled confusion about where and when copy could be edited.
Redesigned ad preview with skeleton UI helping users focus on image selection

Recommendation

I replaced the placeholder text in the ad preview with skeleton UI, helping users stay focused on image selection and previewing how their ad would appear across platforms.
Analytics showing 5% increase in completion on the image selection step

Impact

This update clarified the intent of the photo step and led to a 5% increase in completion on the image selection step.
FullStory session showing users searching for images early in their social post creation workflow

Observation

FullStory sessions revealed that users repeatedly began creating their social posts by searching for an image, spending significant time browsing both stock photos and their own uploads, before moving on to the rest of the post.
Redesigned social post composer with image gallery prominently displayed

Recommendation

I surfaced the image selection tools directly within the composer UI and removed the extra step required to add imagery, allowing users to start where they naturally wanted to: by selecting and refining visuals. This aligned the experience to existing user behavior and created a more intuitive, immediately useful experience.
Final streamlined social post interface showing improvement metrics

Impact

This update led to a 4.91% increase in total posts created and a 15% increase in posts that included media. Most notably, successful image selection increased by 61.9%, confirming that simplifying access to visuals helped more users complete posts and create higher-quality content.

Leaving a Lasting Impact

The process I led didn't just reveal UX problems, it created a clear pathway for how to address them. By facilitating a shared space to observe user behavior, document insights, and design solutions, our team improved both the usability (UX) and visual polish (UI) of our product.

Impact metrics showing 108 issues discovered, 71% JIRA resolution rate, 77% completion rate, 39 usability bugs, and 3 teams adoption

WHAT I LEARNED

Watching real user sessions together transformed abstract metrics into human stories. Bringing my team closer to the customers they were building for motivated us to prioritize even the smallest UI improvements and elevate the overall polish and usefulness of the product.

Turning User Behavior into
Better Experiences at GoDaddy

What I did

In this project, I used behavioral data to drive adoption, improve team alignment, and involve insights into meaningful user-research-driven improvements.

  • Led the adoption of FullStory on my team to understand where users struggled, hesitated, or dropped off when using GoDaddy products
  • Identified usability issues and areas of friction by observing real user behavior
  • Learned how to use Fullstory reporting tools and facilitated bi-weekly "Watch Parties" to share my knowledge and help my team learn more about user behavior
  • Interpreted findings and documented outcomes to ensure our discoveries led to real UI fixes and UX improvements
  • Used "watch parties" to help engineers and designers feel more connected to the customers they were building for, making pain points tangible and motivating stronger commitment to the work

Why it mattered

This work helped give GoDaddy users a voice in product decisions. ✨

By observing user behavior together, I helped my team move beyond assumptions and metrics to understand where our GoDaddy users struggled or hesitated. The outcomes of this project improved the usability, polished the visual design and addressed real user needs across multiple GoDaddy products.

Tools I used

FullStory

Figma

Confluence/JIRA

Role

Sr. UX Designer, GoDaddy

WHAT IS FULLSTORY?

Fullstory is a digital experience intelligence platform that captures and replays user sessions, allowing teams to see exactly what their users are doing and where they might be encountering issues or struggling to complete tasks.

Using FullStory to Observe User Behavior

Every other week, I led a "Watch Party 🎉" meeting where my team and I observed recorded user sessions via Fullstory. Together, we watched real customers use the tools we built, which helped us identify behavior patterns, usability issues, and opportunities to refine the experience. The timeline below shows how this repeatable session structure kept discussions focused, engaging, and actionable.

Session workflow diagram showing collaborative process flow

Parsing through our Findings

I categorized our discoveries and partnered with stakeholders, both on my own team and beyond, to share findings and coordinate fixes. This process led to consistent UI improvements across multiple products, helped streamline key user journeys, and increased the application of GoDaddy's design language.

Fullstory session workflow showing documentation, logging, classification and sharing process

Turning Insights into Results

GoDaddy ad creation interface showing user interaction patterns during the image selection process

Observation

Reviewing FullStory sessions revealed that users frequently clicked the ad preview while selecting an image, attempting to edit written content earlier than the flow allowed. This behavior signaled confusion about where and when copy could be edited.
Redesigned ad preview with skeleton UI helping users focus on image selection

Recommendation

I replaced the placeholder text in the ad preview with skeleton UI, helping users stay focused on image selection and previewing how their ad would appear across platforms.
Analytics showing 5% increase in completion on the image selection step

Impact

This update clarified the intent of the photo step and led to a 5% increase in completion on the image selection step.
FullStory session showing users searching for images early in their social post creation workflow

Observation

FullStory sessions revealed that users repeatedly began creating their social posts by searching for an image, spending significant time browsing both stock photos and their own uploads, before moving on to the rest of the post.
Redesigned social post composer with image gallery prominently displayed

Recommendation

I surfaced the image selection tools directly within the composer UI and removed the extra step required to add imagery, allowing users to start where they naturally wanted to: by selecting and refining visuals. This aligned the experience to existing user behavior and created a more intuitive, immediately useful experience.
Final streamlined social post interface showing improvement metrics

Impact

This update led to a 4.91% increase in total posts created and a 15% increase in posts that included media. Most notably, successful image selection increased by 61.9%, confirming that simplifying access to visuals helped more users complete posts and create higher-quality content.

Leaving a Lasting Impact

The process I led didn't just reveal UX problems, it created a clear pathway for how to address them. By facilitating a shared space to observe user behavior, document insights, and design solutions, our team improved both the usability (UX) and visual polish (UI) of our product.

Impact metrics showing 108 issues discovered, 71% JIRA resolution rate, 77% completion rate, 39 usability bugs, and 3 teams adoption

WHAT I LEARNED

Watching real user sessions together transformed abstract metrics into human stories. Bringing my team closer to the customers they were building for motivated us to prioritize even the smallest UI improvements and elevate the overall polish and usefulness of the product.