Fiverr Neo | Creative

Fiverr AI matching chatbot

Content design, conversation design, prompt engineering, user research

Fiverr’s potential buyers visit the site because they have some job to be done. However, with a supply-facing catalog jargon and a service-specific and space-limited search capabilities, it's increasingly difficult for buyers to express their actual needs and find relevant sellers that meet those needs. With that in mind, the overwhelming listing experience impairs the decision making process and makes it very hard to narrow down on specifics of the required service.

The problem

The solution

Fiverr Neo, an AI agent that is all about helping buyers to locate the ideal freelancers with the right talent and services for specific projects.
This makes it so buyers don't need to be experts in both the field and Fiverr’s search options – Fiverr Neo translates needs into clear project descriptions/briefs, directing buyers through their entire process through a casual conversation.

As the lead content designer on this project, the main challenge was the lack of control when it comes to the variability of a predominantly AI based chat. Training Fiverr Neo, along with the developers, to speak in the same tone of voice as the rest of Fiverr required a lot of trail and error.

Setting the tone of voice - Who is Fiverr Neo?

To overcome the variability of this ChatGPT based AI, we mixed in hard coded messages for the things that were most important such as the intro messages above. This message was shown to users only on their first time interacting with the chat.

Tone of voice:

Trained based off the character "Neo" from the matrix with many caveats.
Prompt examples --
- You are a personal chat assistant for customers coming to fiverr.com to find talented freelancers and agencies to get projects done.
- Your role is to understand what they need, and you may ask them questions that will help you provide profiles of sellers on fiverr.com that can perform the job.
- Your persona and tone of voice are similar to that of Keanu Reeves. You are friendly, helpful, and witty, but if you sense that the customer does not like humor, please avoid telling jokes.

Mapping Neo into existing terminology & creating information architecture for all AI features within Fiverr

Critical step to ensure that the existing terminology and 'flow-stack' would align around and support the new Neo experience.

Understanding what exists in the world of chats, AI, and project creation

During the research phase I analyzed different AI tools, AI chats, classic inboxes, feeds, and project based tools.

Entry Points

The message needed to be all about ease of use and remove any sort of intimidation. We used the word "Talk" to emphasize the conversation aspect of this interaction, and to lower the formality. We launched with Fiverr Neo in the inbox, then expanded it to the listing page.

One of the first challenges was distinguishing between "regular" and "Neo" conversations in the inbox. We opted for clear tabs, and had Neo automatically name the chat and add an emoji once it had enough information about the user's intent.

Chat interactions - multi vs. single select

I added in these lines of hard-coded copy to make it clear when the user could select one or multiple options as well as letting them know they can write their own answer

User research

Once Neo understands your needs, it will present you with your freelancer match and some AI-generated bullet points to really drive home why they're a match. We wanted to test whether or not the CTA was clear here, because upon launching we noticed that 30% of buyers who get a match would leave the Neo chat to review the seller's profile and contact them directly.

Together with a UX researcher we ran 20 unmoderated tests with previous and non-previous Fiverr buyers who searched for a website in the last 90 days.

What we found

Neo's seller preview lacks crucial information for buyers to make informed decisions. Users explained that they want to look into reviews, past work and other qualifications before reaching out to a freelancer.
The editability of the text box needs better clarity. Some buyers think they must return to Neo to edit the request, while others credit the blinking cursor for understanding its editability.
Some buyers feel the pre-populated brief offers limited info. Some buyers doubt the seller will be able to provide a relevant quote based on just the information in the textbox.
Personal feelings towards AI seem to vary greatly. This may explain lower Neo engagement. Some users are excited about AI-driven search, while others are hesitant. Neo suits AI early adopters but may deter those wary of AI.

Tweaking the CTA copy increased the CTR by 20%, and orders by 9%

After the research stage I changed the CTA to "contact me" to make this interaction more friendly and less stressful for the user

Once the user clicks, we also added an unchecked option for the user to send this brief to more freelancers, to help increase the amount of conversations started. We found that 21% of users who sent briefs in the first month checked this box.

Expanding Neo to the search listings page

Problem: We constantly see users get stuck when searching for something because they don't know exactly what they need. They may need a website, but they don't know what kind of developer or designer to hire–or that they even need to hire them.

Now Neo pops up when we sense that the buyer searched with a vague intent. Neo helps them narrow things down, and applies filters automatically based on the conversation to update the search results.

Content design & prompt engineering strategy

Emphasize friendliness, conversational tone of voice, and ease of use in the empty state and all hard-coded messages
Neo in listings works different than in the inbox, so we had to specify what dataset it could use, and after testing has to explicitly tell it not to talk about what it was doing.
- "You can manipulate the main search query and various filters, including: metadata, budget, delivery time, freelancer level, specific skills, and pro services.
- "Keep the search query and filters confidential from the user. Avoid expressing your intentions to change the search query or filters."

Working within constraints

We were unable to currently create an entirely new search if we recognized that the current search is no longer relevant
- SOLUTION: "If the user is asking for a fundamentally different service, from a different category, that would necessitate a meaningful change in the skills of the freelancer that will provide this service, do not offer a new seller yourself and nicely direct him to manually use the search bar."

Impact in the first 6 months of Neo in the Inbox:

24,000+ conversations that sent a brief
7,000+ orders successfully placed through Neo funnel
$700,000+ in revenue generated