self-service sign up
My role: Product Designer
Project goal: Design a customer self service flow that allows users to create an account and become an active user without the assistance of sales and account managers.
Project outcome: A self sign up flow that has increased gross revenue and 60 day user retention.
project background
It was crucial to create a self sign up flow to reduce sign up time which would increase sign up rate, improve usability and create more opportunity for product education. In addition, our competitors had self sign up flows and it was important to have a comparable product.
Research
One goal of my research was to discover users needs, wants & pain points. I analyzed qualitative and quantitative data sources including VWO, NPS, user surveys, Mode reports and competitive research. I also listened to many recorded sales calls and even went “under cover” to experience the sign up process first hand.
Interesting takeaways:
Most SPs signing up employ less than 6 employees
SPs are frequently not worried about competition for a job
SPs expect higher job close rates with lead generation over other marketing sources
Excellent customer service can sometimes overpower the threat of a few poor reviews
Referrals are the top reported source of jobs not Lead Gen
Competitive analysis:
I conducted an in-depth competitive analysis. Since many of our users have used or currently use our competitors, it was important to learn what our competitors offer and their strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, to create a usable feature we want to use language and processes the user is already familiar with.
“Secret Shopper”
I wanted to test our product first hand. I thought it was important to experience how long the process was, when communication touch points occurred and how it was to speak with a sales team member. With the permission of team managers and leadership (of course) I went through the current sign up flow and tested out various “personas”.
“What did I learn?”
Ideate & design
My design process is very collaborative. I like to get feedback often and brainstorm ideas with my team. I lead a design brainstorm meeting where we took time to review our findings and sketch ideas on a whiteboard. Intially, the size of the project and amount of features I wanted to include was overwhelming. Discussing design choices. sharing ideas and getting different perspectives was beneficial.
“Keep it simple”
I needed to focus on the MVP.
My wireframes went through many iterations. Some changes I made were the order of onboarding steps and I updated the location map feature based on engineer feedback.
Before moving ahead with testing with users, I created a prototype and presented the designs to stakeholders. I present during the design process to keep team members aligned and informed. Additionally, I like to have engineers involved early and get feedback about functionality.
usability testing
Usertesting
After creating a prototype, I set up a test on Usertesting.
I enjoy this testing platform because there are a lot of options to select a specific demographic of users. Sessions are recorded and users are required to talk through their decisions and give feedback.
Five users tested the prototype and my wrote observations for each task.
Example of testing observations.
Some ideas for next wireframes based on feedback first prototype test.
Test, again!
After the first prototype test I made some edits based on the feedback, made some edits to wireframes and tested again.
Including “Help” modals was a priority to assist users through sign up flow.
High Fidelity Wireframes
Changes were made to wireframes based on usability testing feedback and the visual designer on my team completed high fidelity wireframes based on our design system.
iterate, IMPLEMENT & launch
Leadership Pushback
I presented the final design to stakeholders. Due to the size and scope of the project, product managers and leadership expressed concerns about development time. Unfortunately, leadership wanted me to simplify the flow more and only focus on collecting a user’s location and payment information. Although it was frustrating, (and went against my judgement as a designer focused on user experience), I went back to the drawing board and parsed down the flow even more.
Updated dashboard with focus on adding location and payment methods.
Creative Solutions
Since engineering resources were sparse and most of my original designs weren’t able to be implemented, I took the initiative to find a low-code onboarding tool to provide context and education for our users. After exploring varius tools I decided to use UserPilot. This tool has allowed me to create tooltips, guide users through onboarding and track metrics and goals.
Example of tooltips I created to educate and guide users.
Implementing design
There was a long QA process and many meetings collaborating with engineers and product managers. To announce this new feature to our current users I used with an internal product to design a new feature modal In addition to implementing the design, I needed to think about communication, such as email and SMS if users drop off.
Team work
The feature was rolled out to a small group of users and was eventually live for all users. I worked with our data team to ensure specific metrics were being tracked. It was important to communicate about the new feature with our customer service team and sales team. This project was a great opportunity to work with many different teams and it was great to get new perspectives.
results & data
After an initial release we have rolled out the feature to all users. Self sign up has proven to be a successful project and has received positive feedback from internal teams and users. Metrics and KPIs have reflected this success.
The sign up time for users reduced significantly. Previously, completing user sign up took at least 1-2 days. With Self Sign Up a user can complete sign up in minutes.
The project has grossed more than $1 million dollars in revenue, improved retention by 60% and increased conversion rate.
moving forward
I continue to monitor metrics and iterate on designs. Currently, I am working on v3 and slowly implementing all of the features I originally wanted!