Redesigning Serverless360 OnBoarding Experience — UX Case Study

What is user Onboarding?

Getting people to signup for your app is really hard. It requires lots of effort, time energy, and money. The business invests so much money in acquiring new customers but most of them fail to retain them immediately after the signup. User onboarding is the process of helping and guiding the users to find new value and success using our product.

We need to create an excellent first impression by creating a perfect onboarding experience.

My Role

I worked as a UI/UX designer for Serverless360, a portal for Managing and Monitoring Microsoft Azure Serverless Resources.

Problem

• User has to pass through multiple screens to complete the signup process
• Lack of consistency in look and feel between the different onboarding screens
• No options for the users to explore the application after the signup process

Goals

• To minimize the friction in the Onboarding flow
• To maintain consistency across the different Onboarding Screens
• To increase the number of accounts activations

Design Process

I followed the Design Thinking approach to redesign the onboarding flow. The process includes Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.

Problem Statement

Users have to navigate between multiple screens to complete the Signup process this results in the increased bounce rate of the users at different levels of signup and account activation process. After the signup process, there is no proper guidance or options to explore the application.

User Stories

User stories are representations of small instances in peoples’ lives. In a design process, stories are what designers use to help them empathize with the target groups. These also serve as inspiration when designers are creating solutions that fit into their users’ daily activities.
Successful onboarding requires a clear image of their targeted users. Before Starting the onboarding process we should have a clear idea about the user needs, goals, and motivation to use our product.

• As an Azure Architect, I want to manage and monitor my Azure Serverless Resources easily
• As a Business Consultant, I want to explore the capabilities of the application to check if it meets the requirements of my clients.

Recently, I’ve revamped the product website and used those data to understand about the types of users using this product. Learn more about the Serveless360 website revamp case study here.

Solution

Signup Flow

In Serverless360, signup can be done in 2 ways. One is the traditional signup process by filling the fields in the signup form and the other one is through the Azure Active Directory. Azure Active Directory is similar to social signups like signup using Google, Facebook, etc. where all the data is managed by the Azure portal.

The signup fields were split across multiple screens. So, the first step is to bring in all the fields under a single screen and eliminating the fields which don't add any value to the users and the business.

Now only the necessary fields are placed in the signup form. Thus reducing the friction for the users while filling up the form. Some SaaS applications ask for Credit Card related information even before the user starts exploring the application. Most of the users drop at this stage as they’re hesitant in sharing the card details as they haven’t tried the application. To avoid this bounce rate, we placed a piece of information at the top mentioning that “15 days free trial and No Credit Cards Required”.

Account Activation

After filling the signup form, an email will be sent to the user with a link to activate the Serverless360 account. Once the user clicks the link, a confirmation message will be displayed and it automatically redirects the user into the application.

Previously, the user has to manually navigate from the activation screen to login screen and after re-entering the login credentials, one can navigate inside the application.

Redesigned Experiences

Reducing the friction:
Friction is any variable, website quality, or user behavior trend that slows down (or entirely halts) the onboarding process.

“Activation is the first point where users achieve the value you promised.”
— KISSmetrics

Other Redesigned Screens

The other Onboarding screens like Sign in, forgot password screens also redesigned to bring consistency across the board.

Exploring the application

Guidance for using the application should be given to users as they progress through the application. Users tend to forget everything if we tend to provide all the information at one go (Unfortunately, our short term memory can’t hold much information).

Users don’t signup to learn about the product. They signup because they are interested in the value we promised to deliver.

Previously, In Serverless360 users have to associate his Service Principal before proceeding into the application. A Service Principal is an application within Azure Active Directory, which is authorized to access resources or resource groups in Azure. Without associating Service Principal, the user can’t proceed further.
Most of the users were hesitant to associate their Service Principal without exploring the capabilities of the application. This further increased the bounce rate after the sign-up process.

Communicating the value proportion:
A user needs to understand a product before using it. He/She should have a clear picture of how this product is going to solve his pain points. Potential users shouldn’t have to work hard to understand a product.

This problem was addressed by giving the user an option to explore the application with some demo resources without associating their Service Principal.

Note: The above screens are conceptual designs.

References

To redesign the Onboarding Flow, I’ve researched about the onboarding experiences of B2B SaaS products like Document360, CloudMonix, DataDog, Statuspage (Atlassian), Freshdesk, etc.

My Learnings

With this project, I learned about the psychology behind the user onboarding, best practices and various onboarding techniques followed by different brands at various segments. Also, I learned about creating user personas and reducing the bounce rate during the onboarding phase.

Conclusion

After implementing these changes in the production, there was a 21% increase rate in the account activations and the bounce rate was reduced to considerable numbers.

Thanks for reading 🙏 Looking forward to hear from you. To know more about me do visit my portfolio 👉 www.imkishore.in