In 2024, I designed a fusion of Ninety’s first onboarding guide and AI chat interface to reduce onboarding friction, increase trial to paid conversion, and radically increase revenue per employee for customer support. The project involved tight collaboration with stakeholders and cross-functional teams, and was a great example of putting rapid design principles into practice.
Opportunity
Ninety, at its core, is a digital solution for EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating system). It consists of an ecosystem of tools that, when used properly, can provide small businesses with a framework for growth.
Typically, an EOS coach (Implementer®) is essential to learning the EOS framework and, by extension, getting value of Ninety. Self-implementation proves difficult, if not impossible, for a lot of businesses. By observing interactions and conducting interviews with self-implementers in the trial period, it was painfully obvious that they struggled to adopt the Ninety suite and often did not convert to paid as a result.
The app was in desperate need of a better onboarding experience. Luckily, we were also in the process of training an in-house AI on EOS theory and app documentation. I saw an opportunity to design a cohesive solution that would couple AI with a gamified onboarding guide to demystify the trial experience for self-implementing customers, shortening TTFV (time to first value) and increasing trial to paid conversion.
Progression
I needed to design a progression that not only engaged the user throughout, but increased the chances of users reaching their “Aha moment” during trial.
Luckily, our product marketing team had uncovered one key leading indicator for conversion – the L10 Meeting™. In EOS terminology, this is a meeting that teams should strive to conduct weekly. It serves as a venue to resolve key issues, provide updates on quarterly goals, and address any underperforming KPIs. Data showed that customers who ran an L10 during their first 30 days were 60% more likely to convert to paid.
Armed with this insight, I designed a sequence that would nudge users towards understanding the principles of an L10 Meeting, running their first L10 Meeting, and then running a subsequent one to establish a cadence.
My hypothesis was that if we demonstrate the value of the meeting and create a habit loop around it, we are more likely to retain users and net them as paid customers.
Gamification
Being a budding indie game developer and having built gamified experiences in previous roles, I understood some of the key tenets of gamification – incremental difficulty, progress tracking, immediate feedback and rewards.
I worked with the product and education teams to identify a sequence of steps, grouped into three categories, that would auto-complete based on specific actions that users took in the app. Initial steps were simple (such as populating the “Role” field under User Settings), with subsequent steps increasing in complexity and ROI. Completing steps would provide users with immediate visual feedback, and completion of all the steps in a section would unlock the next section.
For users, the goal of this journey was unlocking their company’s full potential by adopting core EOS principles. For the business, this was an opportunity to radically improve trial to paid conversion.
Contextual Learning
While the onboarding guide provided users with an actionable roadmap for adopting the Ninety suite, the “why” behind it was not always apparent. Historically, EOS has solved this problem through literature – namely, a series of books on the topic.
Unfortunately, the average self-implementing user doesn’t have time to read three books just to test out whether an app will be valuable for their business. Our goal as a product team was to prove value through the in-app journey, not through theory.
Based on existing customer interactions with our support team, I knew users would have contextual questions as they went through the onboarding experience, and I designed a UI that would accommodate this.
I designed a chat interface that would overlay the onboarding guide via an expandable panel. The chat would allow for custom questions combined with contextual FAQs. This would allow users to quickly get answers to common questions with only a few clicks, and radically increase revenue per employee by freeing up chat support to focus on more pressing issues.
Breaking the Mold
I wanted to break the mold of the typical onboarding guide by catering to all learning styles, including self-learners who did not necessarily want to be guided. As such, I combined the guide with an existing in-app countdown timer, repurposing the progress bar to provide the user with an indicator of their completion % through the onboarding guide. The guide would appear on demand and be easily dismissible as the user worked on tasks.
Some user feedback captures the success of this approach:
"This is so freaking great you guys!.. I appreciate it is not more prominent because some software forced you into the onboarding which can be very frustrating. The fact that <it> checks things off for you and shows you have made progress even if you haven’t opened the guide.. it would actually intrigue me to open it and see what I checked off."
Outputs and Outcomes
The project was as fantastic example of rapid design, taking only a sprint to go from idea to final hi-fi prototype; this was only possible by maintaining regular, open communication between the design, PM, education, engineering and data teams. The impacts were felt immediately, with post-launch trial wins being notably higher for users who had engaged with the guide versus those who hadn’t. Future iterations will extend the guide beyond onboarding into a true in-app everboarding experience.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Client
- Ninety
Timeline
- 2024
Contact
- email@domain.com