Feed Onboarding

Improved flows and call-to-action for the onboarding process,
allowing more users to customize location-based review feed easily.
Role
Sole Product Designer
Team
1 Product Manager,
1 Product designer (Myself),
Engineer Team
Timeline
Dec 2021 - Feb 2022
Platform
Launched on App
(IOS, Android) and Web.
Key Responbilities
 Discussion Facilitator  Led the discussion to decide the design direction, based on the true purpose of the feature to be improved.
 Comprehensive UX Advocate  Established the design direction, taking into consideration the overall experience and main task of the product that I was a part of, rather than solely focusing on a single feature what I designed.
 Visual Explorer  Through various explorations, I have developed an attractive new design that includes motion design.

Problem statement

How might we promote users to complete our onboarding process, which enables them to receive more personalized content on the review feed?

I implemented an onboarding process to enhance the browsing experience on our review feed. During the onboarding process, users can customize their review feed according to their selected preferences. However, the majority of users did not even initiate the onboarding. And even among those who did, approximately 56% churned over steps.

My solution

Revamped the onboarding process to make it easier to resume each step.

I decided on the design direction to make the onboarding process easily resumable, without it being mandatory. It was in consideration of the entire experience of 'My Place', which includes the 'Review Feed'. To achieve this, I redesigned not only the entry card to be more interactive and attractive, but also the intuitive navigation bar.

Success Metrics
• The number of clicks on the CTA button to start the onboarding process
• The completion rate of each page

Impact

The clicks on the CTA button to start the onboarding process increasing by 2.3 times.
And the completion rate for each step has increased by an average of 3 times.

Background

We launched the "Onboarding process" to enable users customize the place review feed.

As you might know from the case study "Places to go," I quickly created the place review feed to validate the potential of our local content and recommendation for discovering places to visit. I also shipped an onboarding to allow users to customize this feed.

This was in response to users expressing a desire to see recent reviews based on their preferred areas and categories. Moreover, it was also the tactics to gather users' preference data for 'Personalized Recommendation' which is one of key product strategies.
Place Review Feed
To start the onboarding process, users can tap the entry card on the review feed. The process consists of two mandatory steps: setting favorite areas and categories. Additionally, there is one optional step to follow reviewers. After completing the onboarding process, users will receive relevant and newly updated reviews on their feed.

The Entry Card
to Start the Onboarding

1st Step:
Areas

2nd Step:
Categories

3rd Step:
Following Reviewers

After All,
The pop-up with Confetti

Icon - Elements Webflow Library - BRIX Templates
Icon - Elements Webflow Library - BRIX Templates
Icon - Elements Webflow Library - BRIX Templates

Problems

However, users did not go through the onboarding process like in other apps.

Initially, I expected that users would complete the entire onboarding process at once, like usual onboarding experiences in other apps. However, our analysis of usage data revealed the critical problems.
* Note: I set the sum of clicks on the entry card as 100%.
Therefore, the total conversion rate may be less than 5.7%.

Problem 1

The majority of users were just closing the entry card.

Pressing the close button occurred five times more often than users pressing the start-to-onboarding button.

Problem 2

The churn rate of the entire onboarding process was approximately 60%.

It indicated that only 1 out of 3 users would finish onboarding.

Decision Making

For the first step to solve the problem, discussed about how much we would promote our onboarding process to users, and why.

The product managers and leadership wanted to promote our onboarding as much as possible. If possible, they suggested making it mandatory like other apps. But, wait... was this really what we wanted for this feature? To just maximize the number of users who used it? Moreover, we needed to consider the overall user experience of 'My Place', where the review feed was included.
Page architecture of "My Place"
Therefore, I initiated a discussion with the product manager and stakeholders regarding the purpose and prioritization of the onboarding. Through this discussion, we identified two product strategy options, and decided on option 2.

option 1

What if our onboarding process would be mandatory, like in other apps?

It could be the most powerful way to promote our onboarding process. But it could critically cause the decrease of review writing rate which is the major task of 'My place'.

option 2

What if we make our onboarding process optional, but make it easy for users to resume when they want?

Users just need to use our onboarding process when and to the extent they desire to receive recommendations based on their interests.

Design Direction

To make the onboarding process easy to resume, focus on each step individually instead of trying to complete all steps at once.

Success Metrics
• The amount of users who start the onboarding process
• The completion rate of each page
Before
AFTER

Design Scope : Entry Point

How to make the entry point more attractive to start and intuitive to resume?

To adapt the new flow and increase the click-through rate of the entry point, it is necessary to redesign it. After exploring three options, I chose option 1.

option 1

Smaller banner, excluding the close button.

  • Lowest cost to develop.
  • But a concern about appearing like ads.
CHosen

option 2

Floating button

  • Appearing like a built-in feature on the review feed.
  • But not noticeable.

option 3

Pop-up

  • Easy to notify users.
  • But it seems that the onboarding may impact the entire 'My place'.
  • Plus, commonly used pop-up ads on the Naver app.
Then, I explored the banner design. In order to make it visible and to give it the appearance of being a feature of the review feed rather than an advertisement, finally I chose a design with a blue background and an animated circular progress bar.

Design Scope : Navigation

How to make users easily navigate the onboarding process?

For the initial version of the onboarding process, which was designed as a one-way street, the navigation bar was not necessary. However, as the flow changed, users are able to enter each step and may want to go back to a previous step and make a different choice. This is particularly important on the last page, "Following reviews page," where reviewers are recommended based on what users selected on pages 1 and 2.

So, I had to design the navigation bar. Considering the frequency of users visiting our feed (about 2 times a week), they might not be familiar with the each step. Therefore, I decided to choose the navigation bar design that includes the name of each step and provides enough space for tapping.

Final Design

Smaller but more attractive entry card

Users can trust to tap this entry card, which appears as a essential built-in feature on our review feed.

If there are personalized recommendations for favorite areas, they will be shown on the entry card

Not only is it very appealing to capture the attention of users, but it also makes it easy for users to set their favorite areas.
Before
AFTER

●

Interactive entry card and navigation bar to display progress status and easily resume each step of onboarding

Takeaways

Goal should be value, not features.

Even though the ultimate goal for this product is to continuously offers users the reviews they might be interested, sometimes I found myself overly focused on increasing the completion rate of the onboarding process, which was just one of the solutions towards the goal. However, it's important to remember that our primary focus should be on the value we provide to users, rather than just features. If I had the opportunity to do it again, I would explore more diverse and creative ways to enable users to customize their feed, such as incorporating the quick onboarding card directly into the feed.

If you'd like to check out
the detailed process,

you can view it on the

🖥 PC

Or, you can reach out

🙋🏻me↗︎