Introducing self-service onboarding to Zolt

Objective

When I first joined Zolt (formerly known as Framework), each customer had to be manually onboarded. We knew this would be a huge obstacle in us being able to scale. We needed a solution that would allow prospective customers to self-onboard to our platform.

Solution

A two week sprint, intending to allow us to ship a MVP solution. Through interviews with existing customers, workshop sessions, and rapid prototyping and user testing, we were able to release a self-service onboarding solution that decreased signup time from 1-2 days to 15 seconds.

Team

Project Manager
Developer
UX Researcher
CTO/Project Lead
CEO/Key Stakeholder
Designer (me)

My Responsibilities

Prototyping
Running user interviews
Final designs
QA with engineering

Research the problem

With a two week timeline, we knew we had to move fast.

The whole team divided and conquered initial interviews with existing customers. Through quick, 15min conversations, we gather a better understanding of the current experience, along with our target audience’s goals and frustrations.

Based on these user conversations, I put together a user journey map to help us pinpoint the exact pain points and opportunity areas.

Define the focus

Our research landed us on the following:

Business problem

To reach more customers by making it easier for them to get started, by articulating our value proposition more clearly, and by teaching them about important customer use cases.

User problem

I want to explore Framework so that I can decide if it’s right for my business.

Solution exploration

With our focus now defined and clear and our initial research complete, we jumped into solution ideation.

Solutions workshop

A solution ideation workshop was lead by our PM, where each team member shared a list of ideas and directions.

Different from our past ideation workshops full of sketching and Crazy 8’s, these concepts were presented in written form, bringing everyone to a level playing field.The ideas were ranked based on effort and impact, resulting in an agreement on a way forward.

User flow

I took the top ranked ideas from the Solutions Workshop, and went to the drawing board. My goal at this stage was to get to the core of the flow, wireframing out each step. There were three key moments we had to solve for:

1.

Sign-up. As a potential customer, I can self-service onboard into the platform, giving me immediate access.

2.

The AHA moment. As a potential customer, I explore a prefilled demo version of the platform, to decide if it is right for me.

3.

Building + Billing. As a potential customer, it is easy for me to start building. I can find billing, and convert into a paying customer, once I have decided this platform is right for me.

Rapid prototyping and alignment

Once I had established the overall flow, I moved on to the high fidelity prototype. I worked rapidly over a few days with frequent check-ins with the team to gather feedback and align on technical scope and some key considerations:

New UI elements

Were there any new components that we needed to introduce, and how could those be useful throughout the app? For example, the welcome dialog was crucial for this flow. It was also a component that we saw use for in multiple other parts of the platform (starting a new course, joining a group etc.)

Copy/Tone of voice

Where could we make copy improvements to unify and clarify? Our platform was split between a “Member View” (where all the live offerings lived) and an “Admin View” (where our customer could build out their offerings). We had received lots of feedback that the current button seemed more like a label, and left people confused. I saw this as an opportunity to test out alternative copy and placement.

Final prototype

The final prototype included all 3 of our focus areas: sign up, the aha-moment, and billing.

Sign Up | I self-service onboard into the platform, gaining immediate access.

AHA Moment | I explore a prefilled demo version of the platform, to decide if it is right for me

Billing + Payment | Once I have decided this platform is right for me, it is easy for me to start building. I can find billing, and convert into a paying customer.

User testing

It was time to put the prototype to the test. I ran 1 hour interviews with three users from within our target audience demographic.

We knew this was not a huge user pool, but with our time limitations and a few cancellations it was all we had to move forward with. While we couldn’t necessarily trust all the feedback (e.g. what types of actions are our target customers interested in first, what is their primary goal etc.), we could still test the usability of the overall flow.

Audrey

  • Therapist with private practice

  • Has been practicing since 1994

  • Meets with clients via Zoom and in-person

  • Not tech-savvy

Tarrant

  • Holistic nutritionist

  • Recently graduated

  • Prefers in-person consultations, but forced to move lot of business online

Brittany

  • Background in nursing

  • Small business blogging about health and wellness lifestyle

  • Using social media platforms for engagement, blogs on own website

Interview results

The results of our interviews were not quite what we hoped. Users ended up being extremely confused by our template content. Being dropped in their own community with pre-existing content was extremely disorienting, to the point where people thought this was content we were giving them to use.

Final solution

With the 2 week sprint window closing up on us, the solutions had to be quick. I pinpointed the main confusion to the below screen, which explained to the user that they were about to be dropped into a template. Users weren’t reading this screen, but instead just rushing through to get to the action.

So, I decided to make it a decision point. Would you want to start with a template, or do you want to start from scratch? By forcing users to pause and think, we allow them to digest information better, and choose the option that works better for their needs.

Learnings and results

New users started successfully signing up for the platform as soon as we released this feature. Almost immediately after release, we updated our billing to include three different plans, while testing out different length free trials.

Between March 1-June 30th

This sprint succeeded at solving for two of our 3 focus areas, sign-up and billing. Both worked from a UX standpoint, and customers were successfully using both. However, we hadn’t succeeded in solving for the AHA moment to a degree we were satisfied with. Users weren’t yet finding value in our platform at a speed and rate we’d like.
‍
Since release, to continue solving for the AHA moment, we’ve added new features like:

After increasing ad spending on social media, we started seeing a massive drop in users converting to paying customers.

Through studying user session recordings, I realized that 80% of our new users were now starting via mobile browser. This resulted in a quick update to our mobile flow and improvements to overall responsiveness.

The onboarding flow is something we continue to iterate and improve on.

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