At Spotlites, we believe the best products are built through genuine user collaboration. Our recent pilot program provided invaluable insights that shaped our latest feature updates. Today, we’re sharing how feedback from real businesses across different industries helped us create a more personalised, user-friendly marketing assistant.

The Pilot Journey: Listening to Learn

When we launched our pilot program, we had a clear mission: to understand how businesses use Spotlites in their day-to-day operations. Rather than making assumptions, we wanted real data and honest feedback.

We were fortunate to work with diverse businesses, including wedding photographers, university merchandisers, web services companies, and B2B wine distributors. Each brought unique perspectives that challenged our thinking and revealed opportunities for improvement.

Their feedback directly influenced our newest features.

Case Study Insights: What We Learned

Paul Liddement Wedding Stories

As a wedding photographer, Paul rated Spotlites highly for usefulness (5/5) but shared a crucial insight about communication frequency:

“I would prefer weekly emails rather than daily communications.”

This wasn’t just Paul’s preference. Josh from Official Merchandise – University of York similarly noted:

“Would prefer to set the frequency myself.”

SaltRoad’s Technical Perspective

Darren from SaltRoad, a web services company, highlighted the need for more specificity and context:

“Recommendations felt high-level and generic for an experienced user. Suggestions would benefit from more specificity and context.”

He also noted the importance of task management:

“The system could be more dynamic, rather than sending the same recommendations repeatedly.”

Lanchester Wines’ B2B Challenge

Emma from Lanchester Wines pointed out that some recommendations weren’t relevant to their B2B model:

“Some of the suggestions were for B2C, like having a blog and customer reviews, which aren’t relevant to LW.”

From Feedback to Features: What We’ve Implemented

Based on this invaluable feedback, we’ve rolled out several significant improvements to the Spotlites platform:

1. Customisable Email Frequency

You told us that one-size-fits-all communication doesn’t work. Now you can:

• Set your preferred email frequency (daily, weekly, or monthly)
• Adjust notification settings based on your availability
• Receive digests of recommendations rather than individual alerts

This puts you in control of when and how often Spotlites communicates with you, addressing Paul and Josh’s feedback about communication preferences.

2. Enhanced Onboarding for Better Context

To address Emma’s concern about B2B vs. B2C recommendations and Darren’s request for more relevant suggestions, we’ve entirely revamped our onboarding process to:

• Capture more specific information about your business model (B2B/B2C)
• Better understand your industry-specific challenges
• Learn about your current marketing capabilities and resources
• Identify your primary marketing goals and priorities

This additional context allows us to deliver more relevant, specialized recommendations from day one.

3. Advanced Priority Scoring System

We’re implementing a sophisticated three-dimensional priority scoring system that evaluates each recommendation based on:

• Impact (1-10): How significantly will this improvement benefit your business?
• Urgency (1-10): How time-sensitive is this recommendation?
• Difficulty (1-10): How complex is this to implement?

These scores use a weighted formula:

Priority Score = (0.45 × Impact) + (0.35 × Urgency) – (0.20 × Difficulty)

This system ensures you always focus on high-impact, timely tasks that match your implementation capabilities, directly addressing Darren’s feedback about more dynamic, relevant recommendations.

4. Simplified, Actionable Language

We’ve refined our recommendation language to be:

• More direct and action-oriented
• Free of unnecessary marketing jargon
• Specific to your business context
• Focused on practical implementation

Every Spotlite now explains exactly what to do and why it matters for your specific business in clear, simple terms.

5. “Try with AI” Implementation Support

One of our most exciting new features addresses the implementation challenges mentioned by several users. The new “Try with AI” feature:

• Provides AI-assisted implementation for complex marketing tasks
• Generates draft content, code snippets, or templates
• Allows you to test concepts before full implementation
• Reduces the expertise barrier for technical marketing tasks

This feature particularly helps users like Paul, who want to implement marketing best practices but may lack specialised technical expertise.

6. Progress Tracking System

To address Darren’s concern about repetitive recommendations, we’ve implemented a comprehensive progress tracking system where you can now mark Spotlites as:

• Unread: New recommendations you haven’t reviewed yet
• Read: Recommendations you’ve seen but haven’t acted on
• Complete: Tasks you’ve successfully implemented
• Dismissed: Recommendations you’ve decided not to implement

This creates a straightforward workflow and ensures you never see the same recommendation repeatedly without context.

7. Task Type Filtering

Based on feedback about different types of marketing needs, you can now filter Spotlites between:

• Technical: Website, SEO, and technical marketing improvements
• Commercial: Business development, content, and customer engagement strategies

This filtering system helps users like Emma focus only on the types of recommendations relevant to their B2B business model.

Real Impact: How These Changes Make a Difference

These improvements aren’t just about adding features—they’re about making Spotlites work better for real businesses:

• For creative entrepreneurs like Paul: Manageable communication frequency and AI-assisted implementation remove barriers to marketing success
• For institutional retailers like University of York: Better progress tracking and priority scoring help manage marketing tasks across teams
• For web experts like SaltRoad: Technical filters and more specific recommendations respect existing expertise
• For B2B businesses like Lanchester Wines: Enhanced onboarding ensures recommendations match their business model

What’s Next: Future Enhancements

While we’re proud of these improvements, we’re already working on the next evolution of Spotlites based on ongoing user feedback:

• More complex priority weighting that adapts to your business context
• Expanded category filtering for even more specific recommendation types
• Enhanced AI implementation support for more marketing tasks
• Improved analytics to track the impact of implemented recommendations

Join the Conversation

New to Spotlites? Sign up for a free trial to experience marketing recommendations tailored to your business.

At Spotlites, we’re committed to simplifying, enhancing, and contextualising marketing for businesses of all sizes. These features represent our ongoing commitment to that mission, driven by real user feedback.