NEXTDOOR'S BUSINESS DASHBOARD

PROJECT

Nextdoor's SMB Dashboard

ROLE

Lead Designer

SUMMARY

The Nextdoor Business Dashboard is an AI-powered, adaptive hub that delivers real-time insights and smart recommendations to help local businesses grow.

CHALLENGE

The existing business dashboard on Nextdoor provides only basic information, leaving many businesses unsure how to take meaningful action. Without clear guidance, smart tools, or actionable insights, business owners struggle to understand the best next steps to grow visibility and engagement in their neighborhoods. This lack of direction results in missed opportunities for connection, reduced confidence in the platform, and limited business success.

PROJECT GOALS

Empower local businesses by providing a clear, intuitive dashboard that guides them toward impactful actions on Nextdoor.
Increase visibility and engagement through AI-powered recommendations, actionable insights, and smart nudges tailored to each business.
Simplify the business journey with an adaptive dashboard that evolves over time, meeting businesses where they are in setup and growth.
Build trust and confidence by surfacing transparent performance metrics and neighborhood intelligence in easy-to-understand formats.
Drive growth opportunities by highlighting the next best steps—whether posting, engaging, or promoting—to help businesses succeed on Nextdoor.

DISCOVERY & RESEARCH PHASE

To ground the project in real business needs, I drew on years of previous insights collected from small businesses on Nextdoor, uncovering recurring pain points around visibility, engagement, and unclear next steps. I facilitated focus groups with local business owners to validate these challenges and better understand their day-to-day priorities. In parallel, I studied best-in-class dashboards across industries to identify patterns, features, and interaction models that could inspire a more intuitive, actionable experience for Nextdoor’s business community.

Day 0 - claiming page on ND

Day 7 - content driving insights, marquee used for promo/ recent content, ad prompt appears

ONBOARDING & SETUP

Guided onboarding ensures businesses don’t get lost with next steps. The steps in this onboarding flow are designed to help businesses be set up for organic success. Completion of their profile helps build trust with neighbors and increases their visibility on the platform. The progress indicator keeps track of what’s missing to unlock the full value of the dashboard.

SMART INSIGHTS & RECOMMENDATIONS

I leveraged AI to taylor insights and actions like post suggestions and when to create the post. Dynamic insights cards adjust based on business type and neighborhood activity. Performance highlights give the business a quick read on engagement, reach, and leads.

VIDEO DETAIL

We optimized the video player to maximize the video space while encouraging engagement with the video. We included a swipe to show additional information. Users can send gifts to show love and participate in the conversation with other fans and artists. Because there is so much unique content in the platform, we included a description and additional tags for eaze of search.

NEIGHBORHOOD INTELLIGENCE

Local intelligence connects businesses with the right neighbors. Heatmaps visualize where neighbors are engaging with the business. Neighborhood reach metrics allow businesses to see coverage and influence across the local area. The personalized activity feed gives real-time updates on interactions happening nearby.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Local neighbor connections are highlighted. See who’s interacting with the business. Nextdoor makes suggested actions like nudges to engage with neighbors in ways that drive visibility and trust.

GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES

Reach more neighbors prompts: CTAs for boosting posts, running ads, or promoting services.
AI-guided recommendations: Points businesses toward the next most impactful step.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Users are often selling on a combination of websites and have come to expect a fast listing process. Generating suggestions for all required fields greatly lessens friction while filling out a form to create a listing. Most often, the user will not need to interact with the form beyond uploading a photo and confirming the suggestions look right.

Generating suggestions from the listing photo using AI will make our application more modern and delightful because other platforms are also experimenting with generative AI solutions, and users are beginning to expect AI enhancements in the product. This can also give us an advantage over our competitors as not many (if any) have full listing generation available for all consumers on their site (Amazon has full listing generation, but only available for businesses).