Problems
CandyBar was a newly launched product finding a product-market fit.
Merchants required additional handholding to set up the loyalty program in their brick-and-mortar stores.
Like a leaky bucket, over 80% of new merchants churned before their 30-day free trial ended.
Click-map testing revealed users were clicking on non-interactive elements
THE CHALLENGE
CandyBar needed to become a fully automated, self-serve platform for merchants to support the company's growth strategy and business goals.
Tackling top of funnel first
Business goals
Primary goal: Convert trialists to paying customers
Once a merchant signs up, it’s our mission to show them value so that they’ll pay for our product.
Secondary goal: Activate newly signed up customers
For the product to survive, we needed new users to take actions that will enable them to see value.
The life of
a merchant
Busy, tired, sleep deprived merchants are busy juggling many contexts like working the cash register, training new staff, serving customers, and inventory management.
“Regulars are the life-blood to my business.”
— Joel Lee
Evaluative research insights
CORE NEED
Merchants wanted a simple loyalty program to increase customer retention. The quicker they could set it up, the better.
INSIGHT 1
Onboarding reduced user anxiety
Inspired by a checklist, onboarding steps definitely helped guide new users to what they should be doing next and reduce the anxiety that comes with a new product.
INSIGHT 2
Too many buttons confused users
Showing CTA’s for all steps not only increased cognitive load, but confused users.
Users also ended up clicking on the circular checkboxes which weren't clickable but only communicated progress.
INSIGHT 3
Personalized, friendly copy made people happy
Friendly welcome greetings and showing an indication of progress helped drive user behaviour.
INSIGHT 4
Images helped merchants understand context
New merchants were unfamiliar and still understanding context.
Images greatly helped them picture the ecosystem better.
An incoming plot twist…
Although we streamlined the onboarding process to 4 simple steps which performed well in usability tests, a large segment of merchants still weren’t completing setup.
Hidden in plain sight in many of our merchant conversations — the two most important things that merchants care about are regulars and revenue.
SOLUTION 1
Introduced onboarding credits
We ran the numbers and figured out that most paying merchants got value between 45-60 days.
We helped them save $40—that’s a free month of CandyBar.
12% increase in onboarding completion
SOLUTION 2
Automated intercom campaigns
I noticed that merchants who chatted with support in their trial period converted quicker users that didn’t.
We utilised Intercom’s in-app callouts and
email campaigns to celebrate and then gently nudge users to complete steps
~9% increase in onboarding completion
SOLUTION 3
Mobile friendly dashboard
We observed ~41% of new users were signing up on a mobile device.
Our product needed to perform across various mobile devices by utilizing a fully responsive design and stable code.
~6% increase in onboarding completion
Designs
Impact
Improving the CandyBar onboarding has had a positive impact new customer experience
64% higher in overall onboarding completion
147% higher active users
2.9% uplift in paying users
For confidentiality reasons, I have omitted the actual values for these metrics.
Project takeaways
Credits for one-time actions only
I learnt that while credits worked well for one time actions, they worked negatively for repeat actions.
Earlier collaboration with support
In hindsight, I could’ve collaborated sooner with the customer support to launch the automated Intercom campaigns experiment, which was a low hanging fruit and could have been done in parallel.
Progress over perfection
Being a self-critical designer, I tend to aim for perfection (or close to it). While it’s important in some cases, it doesn’t help when launching zero-to-one products. I created a priority vs. urgency framework for myself which helped me and the team think about releases in an iterative manner.