Wyzant: Onboarding Improvements
Through 2021, I led product design for projects that were part of a cross-team strategy to improve new student acquisition and conversion metrics. To start, I began a user-centered research approach diagnosing potential improvements to our onboarding and conversion funnel. Based on market and qualitative research I conducted, I prioritized a list of opportunities to design and test so as to provide a new student with more transparency and confidence in their next steps towards a tutoring lesson.
Roles & Responsibilities
Led discovery and user research, collected learnings, defined project vision
Designed high-fidelity prototypes for usability testing
Conducted 50+ usability tests with various user segments for refinement
Provided engineering design documentation and QA support for development
Project Scope & Constraints
We had a three-week timeline for research and design and an eight-week live-testing timeline to allow AB test data to mature
We prioritized “bang for our buck” opportunities, potential high-impact updates to the onboarding flow that had low development effort
Utilizing Usertesting.com and the research artifacts I created helped us determine where we wanted to focus our time
Getting Started With Research
To begin this project, I conducted a Psych Framework evaluation to identify friction and complexity in our conversion funnel. This framework was something I learned about in a Reforge webinar and it felt like a great match for our project needs. The Psych Framework helps you to identify positive and negative attitudes in a user experience.
Courtesy of Darius Contractor
Psych Framework Applied to Conversion Funnel
A map of each step of our onboarding flow with net ‘psych’ scores
Sign up flow showing a lot of negative psych scores
Confirmation step with some positive psych scores
Filling Gaps With New Research
As The Psych Framework is a self-guided assessment, it was important to also document real user behavior. For this, I reviewed current drop-off metrics and watched Hot Jar recordings of real users in the flow. These assets were useful in discovery, but it was a qualitative study, conducted through Usertesting.com, where we gained the most insight.
Testing our existing onboarding experience on UserTesting.com
What Did We Learn?
We gained the most high-impact, low-effort feedback around the Confirmation Page experience. This was a critical point of the flow and we found that there was a lot of confusion on their next steps. Here is what user’s had to say:
“Do I need to add payment now to hear back from my tutor? What are the benefits?”
“I guess I am confused as to how I'm going to hear back from the tutor? Is it by email?”
“I was expecting to see confirmation of the time and details of my tutoring lesson.”
The previous confirmation page design
Design Goals
Given our findings, we decided to focus our efforts on a variety of improvements to the confirmation page. I created design goals that I thought would improve the user experience, drive better conversion, and reduce customer support comms.
Students reaching this page have made a huge step in their learning journey, we should congratulate them!
Meet student’s expectations by surfacing important confirmation details.
Reduce friction and anxiety about their next steps by clearly laying out a path towards a tutoring lesson.
Design Iterations
I then drafted a series of desktop and mobile designs that executed on our goals in different ways. Some examples of these designs are below.
Explaining the importance of adding payment
A full view of their remaining steps
Get them excited about their tutor and their lesson
Explaining how their online lesson will work
A clear step-by-step process
Explaining next steps and our recovery process
From my explorations, I chose iterations that were successful in capturing the goals and ran them as AB usability tests against the control. Across all the user types we tested with, there was one design that delivered the best performance and qualitative feedback:
The winning design as it appears on desktop.
Mobile prototype built for usability testing.
Accompanying confirmation email design that was updated to support the new experience.
Sharing Knowledge With the Team
I presented the research and winning design to our sprint team during a storytime meeting so they could ask questions about development. I then created the necessary handoff documentation and attached it to our GitHub project. Lastly, I remained in contact with the front-end engineer for questions and QA support before launch.
Project Outcomes
We pushed out our AB test and allowed the incoming data to mature. After eight weeks we saw some big wins:
Students who had a tutoring lesson went up 2.5%
Customer support comms affiliated with new student onboarding went down 4.9%
Lessons Learned
Positive impact on conversion metrics comes from listening to your users, but having solid research, design, and testing practices can give you and your team the confidence to make the right decisions that lead to big wins.
