Oaks
An innovative SaaS product that empowers users to reach their savings goals and purchase their dream products.
Oaks offers a savings-based purchasing option where customers save for products and earn rewards from the merchant, thereby reducing the final cost.
In my role, I led the effort to design the initial version of the product and improve usability. Following the launch, I conducted comprehensive user testing to enhance onboarding rate and explored with team to find better product market fit.
Background
Oaks is an innovative SaaS platform that enables users to save towards desired products while earning rewards from merchants, effectively reducing the final purchase cost. The MVP comprises two main components:
1. Widgets (Teasers): Embedded on partner merchant websites, these widgets initiate user engagement. Upon interaction, a popup presents our value proposition and guides users to customize their savings plan, leading to sign-up.
2. Web Application: Post sign-up, users access a dashboard to view or modify their savings plans, create new ones, and set up a virtual bank account to commence their savings journey and earn rewards.
Persona
To better understand our users, we created personas based on insights from interviews and analytics data. Meet "Alexa", a 30-year-old customer service lady, who like online shopping and driven by incentives and discounts. Alexa’s primary goal is to save some money for her desired designer chair while maintaining a healthy financial status. However, she struggles with completing the saving goal and need a plan and extra motivation to achieve that goal.
This persona guided our design decisions by emphasizing simplicity, informative summary, intuitive navigation, and accessible onboarding features. We prioritized creating a clean dashboard that provides quick overviews and a step-by-step setup flow to reduce friction during saving account setup.
Challenge
The primary challenge is to education users to understand the novel concept of "save now, buy later with rewards." It takes continuous user testing and product iteration to identify the optimal approach.
Problem
After launching our MVP, the user onboarding flow suffered a low conversion rate. From google analytics result, we found that the click rate of our teaser is very low, and many users already dropped out at configuring saving plan step.
My initial thought is that user are not motivated enough to configure their own saving plan, so I decided to added a card element which telling user some fun fact about saving in order to motivate them going forward. Since this is low development effect and has potential to solve the problem, we launched it very quick. However, the drop rate didn’t improve at all. After discussing with the team, we decided to spend some time for user interviews to deep into the situation.
Research
After digging into extensive user interviews, we derived some key insights about why users tend to drop out the flow:
As life things matter, people tend to take time to understand and make informed decision about new services before moving on, yet current user onboarding flow does not serve in the right way.
Onboarding brainstorm
Based on research insights, I facilitated a brainstorming session with the Product Lead and CPO to explore better onboarding solutions. Together, we generated seven potential ideas aimed at reducing the drop-off rate. To evaluate these concepts, I conducted three rounds of online surveys, focusing on understandability and usability. The results revealed that users favoured a simplified sign-up process and preferred not to commit to savings plan decisions during their shopping experience.
New onboarding design
In the end, we refined our onboarding process to a "quick signup" version, allowing users to register swiftly and explore our product before making a final decision. After user clicking the teaser, a merchant branded popup shows up, claiming our offer. A “how it works” button brings user to a secondary page where we clearly explain the onboarding process. And user can straight signup with their email address.
This redesign led to a significant improvement in our signup rate, increasing it to 2.4%, resulting in a total of 676 new signups.
In-store visit
We acquired lots of users after the user onboarding redesign, but we observed very soon that not many of them finished the saving bank account opening in the web app. To understand what are the reasons hold users back, we decided to visit our partner merchants - POCO’s offline stores and talked to real customers. After our in-store visit we found that lots of customers’ comments are related with tiredness of opening another bank account.
Insight
Users are generally reluctant to adopt new banking-related services, there’s an opportunity to simplify the bank account setup process to increase their willingness to get involve.
Product pivot
With a fresh perspective, we recognized the need to simplify the product concept to better resonate with users. This meant eliminating the requirement to open a bank account and leveraging familiar payment methods to build trust. After extensive discussions, we decided to test a new concept inspired by the ‘pre-paid SIM card’ model.
New product concept
The new product concept lets users choose how much to “chip in” and instantly see their rewards. After signing up with their email, they review their order and pay via PayPal. Once the payment is processed, they access a dashboard to track their savings progress. Users have full flexibility to decide when and how much to save next. Once the goal is reached, the funds function like a coupon.
Summary
We tested our new product with POCO and received encouraging feedback on our new product concept. Building on this positive response, we planned to expand our research later on through additional in-store visits and further testing. I grew as a designer and walked away with a few key takeaways:
Listening to user feedback is always valuable
Sometimes, the most obvious solutions might miss the target without listening to users. User feedback can help you identify where the real problems are and narrow in on the nuances.
Pivot is painful, be brave and embrace it
As an early-stage startup, achieving the perfect product-market fit is rarely a one-time effort. At this phase, it’s crucial to remain flexible, ready to pivot from the current approach, and explore entirely new directions when needed. Let research findings serve as your guide, steering the team toward the right path.
Credits
Product Lead
Alexa
Product designer
Ciro Chen
Tech Lead
Michael
Developers
Nehaal
Rekash
