With - Host Onboarding
Project Overview
With is a marketplace where anyone can pay for face-to-face calls with celebrities, professionals, experts, and more.
The marketplace consists of two personas: host (the individuals hosting the calls) and members (the users paying for the calls).
The goal of this project was to create a simple onboarding experience for hosts of any age and/or technological proficiency.
The Challenge
Many of With’s clientele are celebrities who don’t have time or patience for frustrating experiences. This meant signing up for the marketplace had to be quick and easy.
User Research
A previous iteration of the platform, called “Rave,” saw a business-breaking bottleneck at this part of the user experience.
The sign-up process, at that state, was a long, arduous form that required users to answer various questions without any guidance or context. Users would get stuck, frustrated, and/or bored. Eventually, they would either abandon the sign-up flow or call support angry and confused.
If users finished Rave’s sign-up process, a large percentage would also drop off before setting up calls with their fans. Upon talking with host who previously went through the sign-up flow, we learned that users simply weren’t aware of what the next step of the process was.
They were lost.
As a result, they never set up “availability” on the platform and members weren’t able to set up, pay for, and experience face-to-face calls using their profile.
Strategy
From our research, we learned it would be essential to create an onboarding experience that walked prospective hosts through every step of the process with a friendly, informative voice.
In order to get hosts to the point where they were ready to share their profile with fans eager to pay for their time, we would need to help them not only set up their account but also
set up a Stripe account
set up a compelling profile
record a welcome video
create session “types”
set their availability,
and share their profile.
This flow would need to become an introductory experience. Its purpose would be to not only help users set up their accounts, but also to help them understand how the platform works, and ensure they are completely ready to start charging for sessions.
The Process
To bridge the gap between strategy and execution, the flow was written out in a Google Doc, where it could be workshopped, adjusted, and refined. Once the language was agreed upon, we moved into wireframes and began designing the finished product.
The Solution
To solve the two major problems we saw in our research, we created an engaging form-shortened experience that
introduces new users to the brand,
helps them create an engaging profile, and
walks them through the integral parts of using With as a way to connect with their fans.
A friendly voice walked users through each step of the process, eventually helping them finish by creating session types and setting their availability.
The new onboarding experience also assigns “session type” tags to new host profiles, enabling them to be automatically added to the new host directory, without the need for human intervention.
Results
In initial tests with new users, hosts were able to move through the onboarding flow in less than five minutes compared to 10+ minutes when setting up an account on Rave.
The application is about to launch a closed beta, but the company expects to see a much higher rate of completion as they begin moving celebrities onto the platform.
My Role
I played an integral role in persona design, product design, branding, information architecture, product terminology, flow charts, research, and UX writing.