Category: case study

  • Carousels for Feature Discovery ????

    The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is* the 71st most powerful company and 43rd largest bank in the world.

    Their mobile app has won many design prizes and they have huge resources to pour into it. This post looks at some excellent Feature Discovery, Feature Onboarding they use in parts of the App.

    If you’ve read other posts, you know we are skeptical of having a carousel at the start of the App. Simply put it is a barrier to the user’s Job-to-be-done.

    However, we’ve always thought its an excellent way to explain concepts and key points about a subset of the Apps features. Commbank does a great job here.

    Cardless Cash Example

    Using the App, a bank customer can walk up to an ATM machine with a special one-time PIN and get cash out, the use-cases for this are:

    • convenience
    • not getting mugged at the ATM of your wallet
    • you can send the code to a family member or friend and they can access that
    • you’ve lost your card etc.

    When banks started rolling out this capability millions were spent on implementation and then they found nobody was using it.
    This is an extreme case of what many Product Manager experience:

    1. the team works hard on a feature
    2. they release it into the product
    3. crickets and tumbleweeds.

    So next the Product Manager walks over to marketing and asks for an email to be sent out announcing this fabulous new feature. So they wait a week or two and the email is sent. Crickets and tumbleweeds.
    Here is how Commbank get users familiar with Cardless Cash.

    cba-cardless-cash-1
    cba-cardless-cash-2
    cba-cardless-cash-3
    cba-cardless-cash-4

    So the interesting thing here is that Commbank:

    1. doesn’t show this when I open the app, only when I go to that part of the App for the first time.
    2. They tell me about the benefits and the journey to get the cash. They don’t tell me how to use the UI.
    3. They may still later use tips to help me with using this part of the App but they don’t overwhelm me now.
    4. It’s a clean introduction that helps people over the barrier of doing something new and different.

    Portfolio example

    Portfolio is a cool tool that allows a bank customer to record other assets. Clearly Commbank wants people to use that feature and the Portfolio tab is BIG and Obvious. The curious user can’t help but touch that tab.

    The first time on Portfolio, the user sees this 3 step carousel that explains the top-level-benefits.

    It is weird the design is different to the Cardless Cash carousel – even the CTA button is different. But the design is sophisticated and resonates well for a user that has more assets.

     

    cba-portfolio-1
    cba-portfolio-2a
    cba-portfolio-3
    cba-portfolio-4

    In summary, these deep features are not thrown in the user’s face first-time, when they become curious they are given a very human introduction – I think its quite nice and is a “just-in-time” approach.

    Your company may not be the 71st most powerful organization in the world, but you can achieve these types of carousels and target to specific personas, users or first time a user enters a part of your application – you can do this with Contextual and once the SDKs are integrated you don’t need to bug your developers to implement – these carousels are code-free!

     

     

    ** with current COVID-19 creating havoc on financial markets, their rank may be up or down!

    Are you looking to get more users to love your mobile and web apps?  Click on the buttons below to get your 14 day free trial or contact us for a demo! 


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  • Video Case Study: Airbnb renter activation

    Video Case Study: Airbnb renter activation

    In this 8min teardown Mellonie Francis of rareiio.com Digital Agency joins me to dig into AirBnB’s first-time-user-experience (FTUX) to see how the user’s job-to-be-done is resolved and motivates them to dive deeper into the platform. User Activation!

    This is Part 1 – stay tuned for Part 2 the home owner’s FTUX.

    Highlights include:

    • Why force a user to enter their cell-phone number
    • “Instant Gratification”: Why allow users to shop for a place to stay first before getting users to register.
    • Why OAUTH login experience is key for consumer apps.
    • Cognitive helpers like icons to silently hint at what I’m supposed to type in.
    • The use of “Stop-and-think” UI elements for compliance components.
    • The role of consistent and playful design elements in the journey.
    • Repeated design elements for predictability.

    Transcript

    David Jones
    Hello, this is David Jones and from Contextual. And we’re going to do a tear down today and have a look at Airbnb and see how they treat user onboarding. With me is Mellonie Francis. Mellonie, what are you up to?

    Mellonie Francis
    Hi. Well, I’m here with you. And I guess a bit about me is that I run a digital agency. We help people with UI UX, web design, web development, all the way through to marketing strategy and scale up. So looking forward to us talking about this onboarding experience, which is one of my favorite experiences and get point out what they’ve done really well. What could they could potentially improve, which is not a whole lot. I bet that

    David Jones
    they’ve probably figured out a lot by now and I may have recorded just one A/B test – they might might have multiple A/B tests running I don’t know. So we’ll just be looking at least what I saw. So you can imagine by this stage, they’ve got pretty, pretty well bedded down. So what we’re going to do is run through the run through the recording and start and stop it as needed. So let’s take it from there.

    Here we are, this is the front page did you get so you can actually start and actually go and do a search straight away, or you could actually login. So there’s an interesting thing for me in terms of instant gratification for the user, which is that I can go and actually search on properties and stuff like that without having to create an account. So that’s pretty interesting on that side of it. And now what I’ve done here is clicked on the link to actually go ahead and login. So that’s the process here naturally, we’ve got OAUTH stuff so login with Facebook Single Sign On, so that’s pretty cool.

    Alright, so standards standard sort of filling boxes there anything you want to say about this Miller?

    Mellonie Francis
    Ah, well, I think from a user experience perspective, no user would probably go and sign up until they had that first experience. So the thing that you pointed out is, I think so essential with what Airbnb is done is that before you can actually sign up, they actually enable you to experience their platform. And, and I think that is so key for user experience is not to just force people to get information first, because you kind of feel uncomfortable, right? All before seeing this. From this sign up perspective. They’ve got Facebook and Google API, which is fantastic. So you can just do the one click touch if you don’t feel comfortable going through this whole, you know, process of sharing your all your data. So I really like the API. And I think that’s really key to talk user experience.

    David Jones
    With your customers. Do you tend to find that adding that actually increases uptake on registrations and login?

    Mellonie Francis
    Yeah, yeah, I think when people people expect these days saying Facebook, Google, people also a now It depends on your platform. What API is that you want to integrate to. Because it depends on your user. Or where are they most likely to, you don’t want to like, if it’s HR App, you would be using LinkedIn to connect them into that. So really got to think about which API is relevant. I really like if if Airbnb wanted, they could have every API. They’re not just Facebook and Google. And they could be integrating with every API that’s out there, including LinkedIn, but they’ve kept it really simple and not confused, or what do I do that just giving you the two options? So that’s fantastic. What I really love about this screen is the icons over here to your right, David, how you filled it in, but it’s got the two person next to your name. Yeah. And at the top, it’s an email I didn’t I think that is top, top UI and top top UX because if I, if I’m from my perspective, I know what that icon means. I’ve been programmed for a long time to nice, I didn’t have to read any text making it much more friendly. In terms of the onboarding experience,

    David Jones
    Got it? Got it. Okay. Yeah. And they do provide the little island thing here as well to to actually see your passwords.

    Mellonie Francis
    Yes, exactly. Very, very cool.

    Here also the birth date, you’ll notice how they’ve presented there’s many ways to enable birthdays, but they’ve enabled a drop down. So I wonder why they’ve, you know, done a drop down and not a actual calendar where you press into the calendar and you just kind of have the drop down in there. So it’s interesting. How did you find that experience? The birthday my entering that was that?

    David Jones
    Yeah, well, I know that because I’m very old. Yeah, but ultimately with with calendar drop downs I’m clicking you know, many, many times to get back to get back through that if they don’t find it have a really good annual navigator. This is actually really quick, you can kind of go through that straightaway.

    This, this is a video so I’m too I’m too late to do it now. Okay, because I’m just pausing the video.

    But why do you think that? I mean, I know that they want to actually get your identity stuff here but it’s interesting nice right? This right up front. Have you got any perspective on that at all?

    Mellonie Francis
    Well because you need to be you need to be greater than 18 to be to be able to use Airbnb. So that’s what I love is that actually explained why they’re actually getting that and they’ve actually given me a confirmation that the people that use Airbnb won’t actually get your birthday just for compliance purposes.

    David Jones
    Yeah, they’ve obviously figured out that people balk at it, because they’re concerned about personally identifiable information stuff like. I always balk at that particular stuff just because I come from the security backgrounds. Yes, yes. Yes. Seems like an unnecessary thing, but

    Mellonie Francis
    Anyway, and I don’t think they had it when you think about 10 years ago, but you know, Airbnb has had a lot of compliance issues thrown at it by government and a lot of people happy in how they’ve disrupted the market. They’ve had put in additional fields to probably satisfy the whole compliance that they’ve got in housing and what they are doing in market. So they probably have to put that in.

    David Jones
    all right, very good. So let’s crack on then. Let’s continue the video and just, you’ll be allowed if you want me to, to stop something.

    Okay. So here I am here, I’m now presented with a modal so I can’t do anything else other than that. So I kind of like these kind of flows from an onboarding perspective in terms of you you’ve got to keep people from sort of wandering off the path so this is this is obviously something they they feel is important.

    Mellonie Francis
    Accept, okay, I’ll decline. Yeah. Cool.

    David Jones
    Yeah. So just some interesting sort of aspects, a lot of applications wouldn’t have sort of like an explanation of that about them.

    Mellonie Francis
    Yeah, this is really good.

    David Jones
    As you said, you know, they’ve probably been hit with a lot of compliance type things over the years or some controversy. So this is one of the ways of dealing with that, I guess.

    Mellonie Francis
    From a UX UI perspective usually with I accept terms of description is a little checkbox but you can see that Airbnb is now move to very clearly, you know, saying accept or decline. Having it as a stop and think like its got its own actual page just to get you to go here is all our laws or whatever. What that’s really interesting. What’s a movement away from that little I accept and move on on a tick box?

    David Jones
    So yep, Okay, that’s good. So tick boxes versus Yeah, basically, except decliners. Yeah, much more imperative, isn’t it? Alright, so let’s move on. As he did, he accepts it and moves on to the next thing. Okay, so it’s telling me I’ve got four steps next life. Yeah.

    Mellonie Francis
    Beautiful, beautifully presented.

    David Jones
    It’s interesting the framing of a two and kind of looks like an old Polaroid photo as well, too, with the white frame on the outside. I’m not quite sure if that’s still live.

    Mellonie Francis
    Yeah. They’re really trying to say it’s a community. It’s really the pictures being chosen to get people to go family environment.

    David Jones
    Yep, yep. All right, adding adding a profile photo pretty standard sort of thing for many social networks. But I guess it really helps here in terms of identity and trust and stuff like that.

    Mellonie Francis
    But it’s nice that this that I’ll do this later as well, just in the text here to make you really go through the journey quick. And I think that is top experience right there.

    David Jones
    Yeah, this should always be some sort of escape clause, if it’s not an absolute imperatives, that sort of thing. And it’s interesting to with the Facebook photo, at least that’s again, removing that friction point of having to go and do get a profile photo.

    Mellonie Francis
    Yeah. Even though Yeah, exactly. So again, if you didn’t do the API look into giving you another opportunity to connect into API again, here, so nicely, nicely done. And see the little bit off points at the top yet, again, reconfirming, you’re on. This is only one step kind of making you feel, oh, there’s only three more steps to go. And it’s so easy. The first step.

    David Jones
    Yeah, very reinforcing, isn’t it? It was the last day that it did with Monday. You know, they had this progressive disclosure thing and it just every time you filled out a form they gave you like, an extra field to do so you always felt as though the the journey was getting longer. You did didn’t feel like you’re getting rewarded. So this is much nicer in terms of being transparent about it. So here we go. You get my ugly mug on here. There is and get out of there pretty quick. Right? So now what we’re doing is we’re doing is phone stuff. So this is interesting. Why are they doing this? Is it a critical part of the whole process of being involved?

    Mellonie Francis
    Yeah, well, I think they want your phone to verify you as a real person, because for them, it’s really important that they get real people on here. And we don’t have you know, any documents or anything like that. Because, Yes, okay. Yeah. So from my Threatmetrix days, basically the people who create fake accounts and stuff like that maybe once a social network gets to or some sort of platform marketplace gets to be really valuable, then you get the scammers come in. And you’ve got

    to think about why the mobile is so important. And this is something 10 years ago when they started and I was one of the host, and I was a user of it. I remember i’d booked in for a accommodation in Hobart and this information wasn’t given out by Airbnb, and then I was in Hobart, hoping that someone would email me back, but I just didn’t have confidence of what if they don’t, you know, how do I contact them, I’m now in Hobart. And this information has to be given very, like, they have to be able to give this information up front so people can easily get in contact. And that’s why I think they’re now doing this really nice onboarding, to get those critical information because you’re gonna have people stay. And we don’t want any confusion when you come to a foreign land or foreign countries often, and you don’t, you can’t get in contact. So I think that it’s critical for them and they figure that out much later.

    David Jones
    Yeah, I kind of feel you know, whenever I whenever I use it, to say I’m in Italy, and you kind of you know, you’ve got you, you’ve got your local 4G SIM card or whatever. So you’re up and running with your data. And then what they what they tend to do is least maybe they did do it, maybe they still do it was push notification, SMS and email. They try and hit you when it’s around that transactional stuff of meeting the host or whatever. It’s like they they don’t leave it to chance. You get it on each of these channels, which I think people will appreciate, appreciate it more than hated in that transactional sense.

    Mellonie Francis
    Again on this. I really love the icon use, which I pointed out to before, but again, icon. I know what I need to do. I know that it’s an email thing and I really encourage people to use that. Whenever I’m designing, it just makes it so much easier to know where what I’ve got to do.

    Subtle, subtle, reinforcing type thing. All right. Good. I think in the video I went out and did the validation from the emails. But so there we are. So we’ve we’ve gone through that particular flow, I’m now a legitimate user. You can see my icon in the in the top right hand side. And now I can get on with actually doing my search, and presumably actually do a booking at that particular stage. So, yeah, so that was interesting. So there’s a couple of painful points in there. But as you said, they’re tied into the actual mission of being able to actually ultimately book something. So that’s kind of interesting on that.

    Because this bit already, right. I think at that point, when you’re going to sign up, they probably pretty much need that because when you’re going to sign up is probably when you’re ready to make that booking. So those information become critical for them to get that information to apply it to that end person that you’re booking with the host.

    David Jones
    Yep, yep. Okay. All right. So I think that’s all we had on there. Do you want to jump straight on to the the host as well, too?

    Transcribed by https://otter.ai

  • Onboarding $234.1M style: Monday’s activation flow

    Our readers develop and run Apps in competitive markets. Even once “safe” corporates like banks now compete with mobile-first “Neobanks” crafting Apps that are disrupting the oligarchy.

    So how do you compete with a large funded competitor? They could be a big corporate or a Blitzscaling startup. In this webinar, Scott Middleton and I examine how one blitzscaler: Monday.com ($234.1M funded)  onboards and activates users. They literally throw everything including the kitchen-sink to make you believe their product will solve your team productivity needs.

    What are the insights?

    If you don’t have 14 minutes to trawl through the takeaways, I’ll give some pointers to what we spoke about.

    1. Tough Sector

    Monday is in a cluttered “Team Productivity” segment, it’s  also B2B SaaS – one of the most profitable sectors for Apps that dominate. Incumbents/competitors include Trello (2011), Asana (2008), Basecamp (1999), Jira (2002).

    With this massive addressable market, Monday.com know:

    1. there will be plenty of triallers
    2. if they can nail the onboarding for each trialler they have a highly profitable opportunity.
    3. this underlies the intensity of onboarding and activation.
    4. they drive for Fast activation
    5. they know there is Fast/high churn potential.

    2. Reduce Cognitive Overload

    1. Contextual Tips stop cognitive overload and start the path to “Aha”, they deliberately reduce the number of options at the “top-of-funnel” so the user can only do what supports onboarding.
    2. No “empty states” (User gets visual feedback of usefulness) even when first time in the App. Many Apps leave you guessing about what things will look like once you’ve adopted the product.
    3. use subtle tooltips to explain the common use-cases. “Show-me, Don’t tell me”.

    3. Viral Acquisition

    Monday recognizes they are going to get the best lock-in when customers invite a colleague.

    So their invite stuff is aggressive – I think too aggressive but clearly they’ve kept it because its worth the risk. 

    They use modals, so I am forced to think about it and its not optional.

    IMPORTANTLY: they have a tiny, tiny “I’ll do it later” option that lets you escape the invite process and get on with your evaluation. This “Single player mode” is an example of then the company goals and trialler goals are different.

    4. Gamification and Contextual “Show-me” (Videos)

    Gamification is more subtle in B2B, tools like checklists, progress bars are silent reminders for a user to complete tasks they enhance onboarding.

    1. Progress bars are great to orient users (in their journey)
    2. Keep demo videos inside the platform and contextual)
    3. Let the user self-pace

    Click to see animation

    5. Second Session – Inbox and more checklists

    The main insight here is that Monday goes all out with contextualizing the user in their journey and what are the next steps. The “Inbox” item is pleading with me to invite teammates and create more boards.

    Its possible this message varies PER-USER depending on where they are in their unique journey (I didn’t test this).

    They’ve probably used their analytics over time to learn that multiple users and multiple board use-cases drive up the likelihood of activation and retention.

    This is expensive stuff to code and deliver but must have been worth doing to keep triallers on-track.

    6. Emails, Push Notifications

    Most Apps know that drip emails during the trialling process give you 3 big benefits:

    1. Get the user back into the App
    2. A second chance to explain possible use-cases that resonate with the user
    3. Open/Click Analytics tell you if the user is genuinely interested or just a tyre kicker.

    Monday is no exception – the email to join a webinar is genius because it allows the user to get deeper understanding that sometimes self-onboarding just can’t achieve.

    But can we afford to do all this??!!

    Monday’s $234.1M investment certainly helps to be able to build out an impressive, dense and impactful onboarding process.

    Other Apps that don’t have the funding may think this is too ambitious and unrealistic for their team and resources.

    The good news is that what the big-gorillas hard-code is now available in platforms that smaller Product Teams can make use of.

    Those apps can still:

    1. pick and choose the design techniques above.
    2. use platforms like Contextual to build onboarding elements and measure the uplift.
    3. experiment faster to see what works – don’t die wondering!
  • Google continuous onboarding in 2019

    In earlier posts we’ve looked at what Google has done to introduce new features and deepen engagement – we call this continuous onboarding. This post is an update that shows the following key characteristics:

    • Google consistently use tips, popups and feature tours.
    • Tips are ALWAYS simple.
    • Tips are ALWAYS contextual
    • Popups and Tips seem to target the user who hasn’t yet used a specific product feature.

    Lets dive in…..

    Advanced Gmail Features

    Gmail is a mature product and after the closure of Google Inbox some of the top features are being imported into the new cleaner Gmail UI. 

    1. “Schedule when to send” – this simple contextual tip explains to the user in one-shot the new functionality. Easy and Done!
    2. Dynamic email – this is more complex and a pretty new feature. The “Learn more” button takes me to a deeper explanation. The “Got it” is what users expect from a popup tip to dismiss it.
    3. Google’s choice of a simple style indicates that they know that the vast majority of the population will understand these little visual elements. They don’t try to be too sexy or clever, this would just distract from the education mission. Google’s tips are consistently in this blue colour.

    The calendar tip is not exactly from Gmail but its closely coupled with the gmail UI. In this case the:

    • Again, its simple and contextual to point at the new button that I’d not previously used.
    • The blue colour is in the button but it still echoes the recognition common across their tip UI.
    • The tip has a dimmed background to standout.

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    Youtube Channel Membership

    Wow, this is an interesting new feature in Youtube!

    It looks like Youtube are taking on Patreon but I’d have never know unless this tip popped up because generally I just click “SUBSCRIBE” and don’t really notice what else is needed.

    Again, despite Youtube being fairly autonomous to Google, the style of tip, placement follows the same style elements:

    • Google tip blue.
    • Title (bold)/Description.
    • Use of “Got it”
    • No use of dismiss or “X” buttons.
    • The blue appears brighter to compete with the intense red of the SUBSCRIBE button.

    Google Docs – Word editing.

    Google wants to take Microsoft Office’s (once) safe userbase. The new feature introduction of co-existence with Office’s documents is a powerful feature that they want to promote. 

    So this popup is not shy about their message – very different to Google’s other low-key feature announcements tips – the popup is a significant announcement. Two things to note:

    1. The blue button will launch the tour below. The text explains what will happen.
    2. The “X” dismiss button is clear.
    3. The user only has 2 possible responses and Google’s analytics will know exactly how each user responded to the prompt. This is how Contextual works – allowing Product Teams to infer different conclusions and behaviours from what buttons the end-user clicks.

    Clicking the (yes, you guessed it – blue) button above leads to explain a few key features.

    NOTE: they don’t attempt to explain Google Docs. They only explain the NEW Microsoft Office integration features such as Managing Versions, what format and Conversion.



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    If the top popup was too subtle, sometimes Google also uses their bug splash coachmark to announce the new feature.

    The Best Practices

    You can guarantee that Google knows that this type of contextual education is a key step in continuous onboarding. The simple takeaways (with complex data backed reasons) are observable in these recent Tips, Tours and Popups in Gmail, Calendar, Youtube and Google Docs.

    The Google Best Practices for tips are:

    • targeted at users
    • has a predictable design and colour that won’t confuse users.
    • doesn’t have any flashy colour schemes buttons or widgets that distracts from the education mission
    • doesn’t use more buttons necessary than is needed for the job
    • buttons look like links (presumably to simplify render on a broad range of devices)
    • allow the user to engage with the tip or to easily dismiss
    • their response is captured and measured.

    There is also examples in Google Photos, Google Assistant and several other products that also use the blue contextual tip – look out for them the next time you are using their products!

  • Compare: User onboarding in 2 Meditation apps

    I was listening to a podcast recently with the founder of Headspace a popular meditation App. I’d not used the App but many people I know have – what amazed me on the podcast was that it was mentioned their revenues exceed $100M – it appears that the sector is big business!

    I downloaded a few apps and discovered there are several use-cases that need to be handled: Relaxation, Commuting, Sleeping, Quick Breaks, Focus etc.

    Compare this to something like Uber where you just have one-job-to-be-done (JTBD) and that is get a ride.  These meditation Apps have to connect with each user’s main reason for downloading the App and get them started on that – its a disparate set of uses.

    Here is 2 examples:

    This App (I think it was Calm – I downloaded a bunch!) makes this really simple and targeted on what they want to get users doing. The App points to all the important features to get me focussed on my job. The goal is to get me to the “aha” experience.

    Brain.fm have a nice App and they take a carousel approach to introducing the user to the products main features. Their unique value is they use some magic underneath the music (presumably Binaural Beat” or “Isochronic tones”) to increase the impact on the meditator.

    I like they way they hit that with “Music designed for your brain”. It would directly create continuity from the:

    1.  marketing phase, where the user decided to install the App

    2. onboarding the phase, where the user decides to keep using the App.

    Overall, the first App is more effective. Sure, its less pretty (the Brain.fm carousel looks great). But it has 2 downsides:

    a) its not contextual

    b) they force the user to signup. 

    These two factors create a barrier to get to “aha”!

    Both Carousels and contextual Tips/Tours are available in the Contextual platform, so its really up to your team to choose which method to use.