Redesigned Onboarding

Timeline

Q4 2024

Team

PM, Marketing Manager, 1 Engineer

Role

Growth Designer

The problem

Over the past year, our user activation rate has stopped growing, and we’ve noticed fewer people are moving from the trial to a paid plan.

At first, our app showed strong growth and high user engagement. But now, the activation stage has become a weak point: it's stopping new users from becoming long-term, paying customers. This is a serious concern, since successful activation is closely linked to user retention and future revenue.

If onboarding isn’t clear or helpful, users might lose interest quickly. They may not understand the full value of the app and end up leaving early. This drop in activation could hurt our growth and income, so we decided it was time to take a fresh look at the onboarding experience and make improvements.

Design Process

As part of the NORD onboarding redesign, I followed a step-by-step process to improve key metrics like t2pCVR, pCVR, and boost the number of users who allow location and notification permissions. Here’s how we approached it:

Investigate

We noticed that the old onboarding flow had low conversion rates for both trial-to-paid users (t2pCVR) and overall purchases (pCVR). We also saw that many users were skipping location and notification permissions. To understand what was going wrong, I looked at how competitors handle onboarding and reviewed our current flow. This helped us find weak spots and collect useful ideas from other apps.

Design & Collect Feedback

Based on the insights, I designed 3 different onboarding flows with different screen orders. Then I organized a team kick-off to go through the options together and decide which version had the most potential. After processing the feedback, I improved the chosen version to make sure it worked well for both users and business goals.

‍Implement & Measure

After the new design was built, we ran an A/B test to compare it with the current onboarding flow. We looked at the data to see what worked and used those insights to decide on the next steps: whether to keep iterating or continue improving the feature further. The main goal was always to improve the key metrics and give users a smoother, more helpful start in the app.

Investigate

We saw that the current onboarding flow had a t2pCVR of 29.8%. Our goal was to improve this by 10 to 15%. We also learned that users feel the onboarding has too much text and information, which makes it hard for them to understand the app’s value. This can lead to lower first-time engagement and fewer users converting to paid plans.

Hypothesis:

  • Users have trouble understanding what the app does because the onboarding is overloaded with text. It’s hard for them to quickly see the benefits.

  • Users are more interested in features like live radar, weather forecasts, and hurricane tracking (especially during hurricane season). These features are important for them to stay informed about storms and other natural events.

  • Many users trust the app because it’s recommended by friends and family. This positive reputation helps build trust and influences their decision to try it.

Design & Collect Feedback

After doing research to understand the problems, I organized a kick-off with the marketing manager, product growth manager, and the rest of the team. We came together to find ways to improve the key metrics and make the onboarding experience more engaging.

Kick-off highlights

During the session, we looked at different design ideas and shared thoughts on how to improve the flow. Together, we came up with a few important decisions:

  • Show the main value of the app clearly, so users understand why it’s worth subscribing. We wanted to focus on how the app helps people stay safe during any weather and keeps them informed about changes in their area.

  • Use short and catchy phrases to highlight the app’s key benefits and quickly grab the user’s attention.

Based on the feedback and ideas from the workshop, I iterated on the design and began working on integrating these solutions into the onboarding flow to drive better engagement and conversion.

‍Implement & Measure

Showed the main value of the app

We introduced the app’s key features in a simple and clear way. This helped users better understand what NORD can do for them and made it easier to move through the onboarding steps. By showing the most useful features early on, we helped users see the value of the app right away.

Made the experience easier to follow

We cut down on too much information and focused only on the most important points. This made it easier for users to understand the app without feeling confused or overwhelmed, which improved their first experience.

Built trust with new users

We added user reviews as social proof, placing them just before the subscription screen. This helped build trust and showed that others had a good experience with the app, which encouraged more users to subscribe.

Impact

  • Increase the tCVR by 11.2% (from 12.4% to 13.8%)

  • Increased the t2pCVR by 11.9% (from 29.8% to 33.3%)

  • Increased the dpCVR by 14.9% (from 1.62% to 1.86%)

Learnings

Onboarding Impact

The updates to onboarding helped improve conversion rates, but they also created high expectations about the product. During severe weather events, those expectations weren’t fully met, which led to a drop in user retention.

Expectation vs. Delivery

The updated onboarding made the radar feature more visible and helped set clear expectations, which increased users’ interest in buying the app. But later, some users may have felt disappointed because the main features of the app weren’t shown or explained well after onboarding. To keep users engaged in the long run, we need to make sure that what we show during onboarding matches what they actually get in the app.

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