WHY ARE WE REDOING ONBOARDING?

Customers don't understand the value of onboarding, leading to incomplete profiles & difficulty showing ROI.

Despite efforts to introduce customers to myG2 , there are challenges in the onboarding process. Customers often experience confusion and difficulty in completing initial setup tasks, understanding the value of the platform, and utilizing key features. This leads to incomplete profiles, underutilized features, and an inability to demonstrate ROI, which ultimately affects customer satisfaction and retention.

RESEARCH & DISCOVERY

How should I conduct the most effective research?

To conduct the most effective research & gain insights into customer problems, I turned to internal teams that were client facing, because they knew our customers the best. 7 stakeholders were interviewed, all holding various positions including Customer Success Managers (CSMs), Relationship Managers (RMs), Account Managers (AMs), Account Executives (AEs), and Customer Managers (CMs). The primary objective of this study was to gain insights into the challenges experienced by both internal teams and customers during the onboarding process for the CORE subscription.

View Interview Notes

WIREFRAMING & ANNOTATING

Taking a good look at the current onboarding process and sketching out ideas.

By taking screengrabs of the current onboarding that is implemented for users, and annotating what is wrong with it as well as areas for improvements, we can use these insights to create wireframes for our new experience.

DESIGNING & ITERATING

Creating an onboarding checklist that guides users through the process.

Using key takeaways from the research I conducted with internal teams at G2, I crafted a viable solution: a guided checklist that offered users a hands-on experience, reminded them of tasks they needed to complete, and provided a convenient reference point for completing different parts of their profile, ensuring easy navigation.

CONCEPT #1

Checklist Sidebar RoRange

This concept includes a checklist docked on the right side of the screen that highlights tasks to be completed in MyG2’s UI using the brand rorange color.

CONCEPT #2

Checklist Sidebar Neutral

This concept includes a checklist that iterates on the previous version, using more neutral colors that are easier to understand, adhering to UX best practices for color usage. The progress bar at the top visually encourages users to continue completing their profile, aligning with the Goal-Gradient UX Law. Additionally, the bookmarked tabs provide users with a dedicated space to easily navigate to frequently visited tabs.

CONCEPTS #3 + 4

Full Page Checklists

These concepts use a full-page view to showcase a checklist where actions can be completed directly within the checklist. It serves as a central hub for the checklist, allowing users to refer back to it from any page.

✨THE SOLUTION

The Modular Checklist

This final concept takes into account all the advantages and disadvantages to create a cohesive experience. It features a floating checklist that can be dragged and moved anywhere on the screen, ensuring it doesn’t interfere with workflow. The checklist is also expandable and collapsible, minimizing its impact on screen real estate. It retains the effective call-to-action tasks from the initial concepts but with the added benefit of being dynamically placeable, giving users more control over how they integrate the checklist into their workflow—or whether they include it at all. It serves as a constant reminder of tasks to complete while avoiding unnecessary distractions, effectively addressing the key takeaways from the research.

BUT DOES IT WORK

Usability testing the checklist

After creating the checklist, I crafted a prototype that effectively demonstrated a use case for it and sent the prototype to usertesting.com, asking users a series of questions as they navigated through the experience. 80% of users interacted with the checklist as expected and were satisfied with the experience.

View Prototype

NEXT STEPS & TAKEAWAYS

This new experience aims to keep customers engaged so they complete their profiles, so G2 can show ROI and reduce churn.

This onboarding experience will be deployed as part of a larger update to the platform in December. Working on such an important project that directly impacts the business gave me the unique opportunity to exercise significant creative liberty in terms of the research I conducted and the design elements I used. G2 is in the process of implementing a brand-new design system, and I was able to incorporate some of the components into this project. If I were to summarize my key learnings, they would be:

• Crafting effective interview questions to obtain the best data from interviewees.
• Creating a comprehensive research plan to gather both qualitative and quantitative data.
• The importance of showcasing research when presenting to stakeholders, ensuring data-backed design decisions.
• Teamwork, which, although it seems obvious, is crucial in a corporate setting as it provides a safe space to bounce ideas off each other.
• Design critiques were invaluable, as they offered broad feedback from a diverse group of people, sparking new ideas that I hadn’t considered before.
• One-on-one conversations allowed me to delve deeper into my process and receive specific advice on aspects of the project that directly impacted my final product.