Donny Merrill
All work

02Case study

Self-serve onboarding

Turning a nine-month, call-driven implementation into something customers finish on their own.

Company
Fishbowl Inventory
My role
Director, Product Design
Team
3 product designers, with a Sr PM and the directors of platform and front-end development
Shipped
June 2024
Fishbowl Drive getting started dashboard showing a completed onboarding checklist
9MO→5WK

Time for a customer to be fully integrated

14DAY

Free trial, no credit card until it ends

20%

Turnover reduction target set for the project

2

Testing methods: Userbrain and customer Zoom calls

ASituation

Onboarding didn’t scale

Drive’s onboarding relied on implementation and sales calls. It could take up to nine months for a customer to be fully integrated in the system. COVID turned that into a roadblock, and customers were telling us they wanted self-service anyway.

My team set out to reimagine the experience and let users onboard themselves. We set three goals:

  • Improve onboarding time. Make it far less than a nine-month process.
  • Create a game-like feeling. Make it easy, and a little rewarding, for the customer.
  • Reduce turnover by 20%.

BResearch

Learn the process from the people who run it

  • Sat in on implementation. We joined live calls with customers and watched recorded ones to learn every step and where customers got stuck.
  • Talked to customers and ran a competitive analysis of other onboarding flows.
  • Borrowed proven patterns: a 14-day trial, no credit card until the trial is over, one user to start with more available at purchase, a trial countdown in the menu, support chat, and the option to explore with sample data.
Whiteboard sketch of the onboarding flow and 14-day timeline
FIG. 01Whiteboarding the flow against a 14-day timeline.
Drive onboarding user flow diagram broken down by day
FIG. 02The user flow, broken down by day: timeline, actions, decisions.

CTest

What customers changed

We tested Figma prototypes through Userbrain and on Zoom calls with customers and the implementation team. Two findings changed the design:

  • The popup checklist was hard to find, so we changed its color and moved it.
  • Importing data caused errors. Getting data into the system was the biggest hurdle, so we built CSV templates that made imports predictable for customers and for the developers.
Remote testing sessions with participants and key findings
FIG. 03Testing with the implementation team and customers.
“I like this, it puts it into the hands of the customer, they get to own their data.”
Nadia Budge, test participant

DDeliver

A checklist you can always come back to

The result is a walkthrough wizard customers can refer to at any time: an onboarding dashboard, a persistent getting-started checklist, a sample-data sandbox, CSV templates, and a clear moment of “you’re ready to go live” that leads into upgrading the plan.

Fishbowl free trial sign-up shown on a laptop and phone
FIG. 04Try Fishbowl free for 14 days. Sign-up on web and mobile.

EImpact

Nine months to five weeks

  • Full integration dropped from up to 9 months to 5 weeks.
  • Users reported the checklist made the process very easy. Some said it was almost as rewarding as checking off achievements in a game.
  • A consistent, self-serve experience that supports retention and sets Fishbowl apart from competitors.