Steep Onboarding Redesign
One crucial connection can lead you to your next opportunity.
Through user research, I established an onboarding plan to connect Taiwanese founders with resources and mentorship they needed to expand to the US via STEEP!’s Facebook group.
Role: Lead UX designer
Type: Onboarding, Engagement, Strategy, UX, UI, Email design, User research, Service Design
Timeline: 8 weeks
The Challenge
To empower Taiwanese startups to succeed in the US, STEEP! Founder Erica started curating a community of Taiwanese startups.
Erica, the founder of STEEP! recognizes her limitations and wants to make introductions more scalable in the Facebook community
She spends a third of her time tailoring intros among members, so she wanted to facilitate connections in the group organically.
Results
With the new member engagement strategy, we empowered members to:
Onboard and get value faster by cutting 3 onboarding steps
Find other members through public introductions on the Facebook wall, previously made privately
Be more successful expanding to the states through finding relevant connections in the group
Onboarding Template Design Process
I redesigned the onboarding email template with STEEP!’s existing branding, adding more context to encourage members to plug in.
Defining the Problem
- 6 member interviews - learned about pain points & motivations to connect online
- Affinity mapping - grouped interview themes
“I’m not so much interested in having a group dialogue. I’m here to network.”
From the interviews, we learned members’ motivations for joining:
To learn about other members’ expertise
To connect directly with others
Persona Formation
I created a persona Chien Po based on our interviews to help keep her needs top-of-mind.
Mapping the Onboarding process
In order for members to engage with the group, we wanted to make sure we weren’t losing them during the onboarding process.
- Journey mapping the current state helped identify what might prevent a member from engaging during onboarding
- Visualizing user flows helped identify unnecessary steps
Template credit: GB Lee
engagement Strategy Recommendations
Based on our research and the dips observed in the journey mapping, I recommended the following changes:
- Shorten the onboarding process by initiating steps on users' behalf
- Redesign the onboarding email template to remind users of STEEP!'s benefits once they complete onboarding
- Make introductions public to encourage more discussion and organic connections
Public introductions in Action
Formerly done privately, I recommended implementing public introductions on the group wall, which sparked more discussion and helped members achieve their goals of connecting directly to others.
Key Learnings
Visualizing the onboarding process helped us identify unnecessary steps
Simplifying the email template and adding context made it easier for members to digest
Interviewing users helped us tailor our programming to what members wanted