Context
Snow Leopard Tech Challenge (SLTC) is a annual startup competition organized by Irbis Ventures, a digital venture builder headquartered in Singapore and Mongolia.
After SLTC 2019 we knew our onboarding experience was disastrous to the point that sometimes we had to personally guide them through the onboarding.
So for two months I led an effort to improve the onboarding flow, achieving results beyond what the company thought was possible.
Challenges
Completion rate
1 hour 35 minutes
Average time spent
Approach
Aligning the team
We needed to collectively acknowledge problems with the onboarding flow, share concerns about a project of this scale, and uncover requirements for finding solutions. My team achieved this through design sprint. I planned and facilitated a one-hour discussion with each team members, which culminated in an intensive two-day design session. The concepts from this design sprint created the shared principles and goals needed to make the project a success. Several major product ideas from the sprint would reshape not only the Onboarding flow, but also Log In and Invitation systems.
Crafting a linear experience
Many of the problems of the existing onboarding experience—nonlinear flow, redundant & useless content, lack of safe exit points—stemmed from using a multi-varied flow. As we found ways to eliminate content and steps, a concept emerged: how might we reduce the five-page flow to a single page linear flow?
After exploring several concepts, a linear approach performed best in user research and was preferred by Irbis Ventures’s executives. Instead of a constantly going back and forth, one page could house mini-flows so users could complete all necessary steps without leaving the Onboarding page. This set clear expectations up front about what was necessary to participate in SLTC 2020
Results
Dramatically increased completion rate
Reducing the old onboarding flow to a single onboarding page was enormously successful. The onboarding redesign project was a dramatic step-function improvement that increased registrations far beyond anything the company had been able to accomplish.
Culture shift
The our team’s accomplishments demonstrated that bigger bets could be successful and would be supported by executives. This specific design patterns were soon adopted by Irbis Oasis platfrom as a whole.