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Key Takeaways

• A successful customer onboarding framework should teach users how to succeed with a product, not simply how to use it.
• Time to value can be misleading if the action being measured doesn’t actually move customers closer to their desired outcome.
• A SaaS onboarding checklist can make vague instructions actionable by showing users exactly what “complete” or “ready” looks like.
• Removing friction isn’t always the answer. Adding the right friction can better prepare customers for success.
• In this case, adding a profile score and checklist increased paid conversion by 70%, while increasing time to first application by only one day.

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On paper, the initial redesign of our onboarding journey worked. The messages were beautiful, easy to scan, and contained vital information on how to use our profile. More importantly, the time it took for trial subscribers to submit their first application for a role had been reduced by a full week. That was a significant improvement in TTV.

But when I looked at customer behavior, I saw a problem. A significant number of trial members were applying for roles with incomplete profiles. Some didn’t even have a profile image.

The journey followed the same path as many onboarding journeys: each day highlighting a specific feature of the platform. Adding a profile picture came early because the headshot was one of the most important elements of an actor’s profile. Members applying without one were putting themselves at a serious disadvantage. If trial members were applying for a role without an image, something was wrong.

A good customer onboarding framework doesn’t just teach customers how to use your product. It teaches them how to succeed with your product. 🍉

Applying for a job looked like value because the customer had taken the primary action the SaaS platform was designed to facilitate. But if casting directors were unlikely to seriously consider an incomplete profile, had the customer actually reached value?

And, in that aspect, we were failing trial members.

I had some idea of what casting directors needed/wanted to see in profiles. I had talked to the customer success team multiple times about different aspects of it. But I wanted to nail it down and get really specific. If you were helping your friend or daughter enroll, what specific steps would you give them to help them thrive on the platform?

I devised a 100-point weighted scoring system based on the items casting directors actually wanted to see on a profile and on what I could track in Braze. 

I brought this to customer success and had them weigh in on the point system. They had some suggestions but were, for the most part, happy with the system.

The result was essentially a SaaS onboarding checklist that prioritized the actions most likely to help members succeed: must-haves, visibility boosters, and bonus elements. Each item included a brief explanation of why it was important to their profile. Instead of simply telling someone to “add special skills,” we explained that adding them could help their profile appear in a casting director’s search for someone with a particular skill.

Then, an email with the checklist and an overall profile score was carefully inserted at the beginning of the journey. This was kept as brief as possible because our team was still striving for scannability. Half of the new enrollees saw their profile score and checklist. The other half just moved on to the second email in the journey.

The result: those who saw the new email in their journey were 70% more likely to purchase a paid membership than those who didn’t.

The results were statistically significant. And we only added one day to the time it took those trial members to apply for their first role.

The redesign made people start using the product more quickly. The subsequent optimization slowed them down slightly, but made them much more likely to buy.

We added a little friction to the journey, but trial members were better prepared to actually succeed when they started applying. And, as it turned out, they were also much more likely to buy.

Sometimes the best optimization comes from adding a little friction rather than removing it. 🍉

This is one example of how I use customer behavior, testing and lifecycle strategy to improve business outcomes. See more of my lifecycle marketing results.