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

  1. 6 member interviews - learned about pain points & motivations to connect online
  2. Affinity mapping - grouped interview themes

Interview.png
 
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.

download (1).png
 

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.

  1. Journey mapping the current state helped identify what might prevent a member from engaging during onboarding
  2. 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:

  1. Shorten the onboarding process by initiating steps on users' behalf

  2. Redesign the onboarding email template to remind users of STEEP!'s benefits once they complete onboarding

  3. 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

 

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