Sign up rate
Through redesign of homepage and design updates of sign up page, we increased sign-up conversion by 37%.
Why we started redesigning onboarding?
Lokalise has a massive growth in between 2018 to 2022, we doubled our revenue year over year, and raised a $50M series B funding in 2022...
However, as the market got we noticed a massive drop in the acquisition and activation rate since late-2022. This is a red flag for us as we know the activation rate is closely linked to retention, and we know we are at risk of losing future revenue when looking at the trend.
How I tackle the problem
As the founding designer of the growth team, I had the opportunity to establish the foundation of the design process.
Step #1 Dogfooding - Mapping out the current onboarding.
When we first established the Growth team, I was the only team member in the team (Both PM & EM hadn’t started yet). Since I had no one to rely on and plan stuffs, I could only rely on my designer colleagues (i.e., Lokalise design team).
The first thing I did was to ask everyone to join me in evaluating the current onboarding (aka, dogfooding). This exercise helped us internally gauge how effective our onboarding process is and kick off discussions on potential improvements.
Step #2 – Analyzing Quantitative data
After mapping out the end-to-end experience, my PM also joined the team where we finally had more resources in doing more stuffs, that include — doing data analysis to find out user behavior, where people drop, what features they are using during trial period…
Step #3 – Interviewing customer & prospects
After identifying where drop-offs occur, we began conducting interviews with both prospects and current users to understand why they were leaving during the onboarding flow.
Through these steps, we have identified 3 major frictions that block users from onboarding to Lokalise.
I am glad that you asked (I hope you did!). It’s boring to continue reading the texts, so let’s have some visuals to support you.
Let’s do a little quiz. Can you guess the problems we identified? 👇
Take a moment to think — No cheating!
Got your answer? Scroll down...
Note 1
What is this banner for? Users did not understand what action it was asking them to take.
Note 2
The experience felt interruptive. People wanted to get into the product, not decode a blocker first.
Note 3
Too many CTAs competed at once: upload, watch a video, sign up for office hours, or pick an option.
Why are these problems, problems?
1. Cognitive Load
Cognitive load refers to the mental effort needed to complete and understand a task. Instead of making it easy to start using Lokalise, we overwhelm users with a long list of actions and calls to action (CTAs), which takes time to process.
2. Banner blindness
The top banner is something that everyone ignores. In fact, the average click rate of a top banner is just around 0.004%. However, at the same time, this top banner is breaking the user experience.
3. Interruptive Experience
Finally, showing users a pop-up that blocks them from accessing the app right away disrupts their flow and can lead to irritation, especially when the pop-up is also cluttered with multiple CTAs.
And of course, we found even more problems...
Additional friction points identified through internal dogfooding
Seems like you found a lot of interesting problems. How did you prioritize then?
I am glad that you asked (I hope you did!). It’s boring to continue reading the texts, so let’s have some visuals to support you.
1. Design Sprint (i.e., Prioritize as a team)
After we have done our research to identify the problems, I facilitated a design sprint workshop with my PM + Engineers + Data Analyst + User researcher to prioritize the problems together as a team, and propose solutions.
Design ideas we came up with from the workshop
From the workshop, we identified several solutions to improve the user experience:
- Allow users to preview translation results to motivate them during the signup process.
- Implement a passive onboarding checklist to facilitate users (instead of a checklist modal).
- An interactive sign-up process to help users get familiar with the product.
- Develop a JTBD-based homepage to allow users to identify supported content types earlier.
Four early concepts we explored after the workshop
2. Then we went testing with users on each of the ideas
Following the workshop and prototyping phase, we conducted user testing with prospective users to determine which idea would have the most significant impact.
Here's what we learned from the prototype testing:
- The JTBD-based homepage helped visitors identify what we can help them with earlier (the types of content they can translate).
- The passive onboarding checklist helped new users familiarize themselves with the platform without disruption.
3. Then more iterations of design & testing...
Incorporating user feedback, I began iterating on the design to address the usability and UX issues raised by testers. This ensures we deliver a high-quality product.
Final designs and what we shipped
After two rounds of testing, we began polishing the final Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to prepare it for shipment and real-world user testing.
1. A JTBD-based homepage
We rolled out a JTBD-based homepage after discovering that visitors often come to Lokalise to localize specific content types.
36% increase in signup attempt rate
Visitors could identify supported content types earlier, reducing friction at the top of the funnel.
15% increase in actual sign up rate
Clearer value proposition and JTBD-aligned messaging converted more visitors to sign-ups.
2. Light-refresh of our sign up page
We dedicated a week to lightly refresh our sign-up pages, showcasing Lokalise features and updating copywriting to better communicate our offerings.
37% increase in sign-up conversion
Combined with the JTBD homepage, updated copywriting and feature showcase drove overall sign-up growth.
Reduced cognitive load at sign-up
Cleaner layout and focused messaging removed friction that previously caused users to abandon the flow.
3. Full redesign of our in-app onboarding
We replaced the interruptive modal with a passive, actionable checklist that guides users through onboarding without blocking access to the product.
18% increase in projects created
The passive checklist guided users to the Setup moment without disrupting their flow.
15% increase in translation downloads
More users reached the AHA moment — downloading their first translation — with the new guided experience.
Feedback & impact
Combining all the implementation and design we delivered, we managed to:
- Increase sign-up rate by 37%
- Increased sign-up to AHA rate from 3% to 12.7%
- Doubled the number of trial-to-customer rate.
And here’s one user feedback that made me extremely happy.
“I have never used Lokalise before but I feel like I have used it. That’s a weird feeling.” — Prospect of Lokalise.
Further readings
I wrote an article on onboarding together with Felix Lee from ADPList. If you are interested, feel free to check it out.
Published in UXCollective · March, 2024
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Templates to download
I built two templates during this project that you can clone and use for your own work.
Onboarding dogfooding evaluation template
The Miro board I used to run the internal dogfooding exercise with the design team.
Workshop agenda we can take away
A reusable workshop structure for prioritizing onboarding problems and aligning on the right experiments.
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