Growth

Increased subscriber acquisition by optimising growth funnel.

Project Overview

Industry. SaaS | Start-up | Scheduling & Automation

Challenge. How to increase the number of subscribers?

Role & Responsibilities. Project management, UX Research and UX Design

Impact. Improved subscriber acquisition by optimising key touchpoints, refining metrics, and iterating continuously for better performance.

Understanding the Problem

User drop-offs before completing subscriptions indicated friction in the journey.

Onboarding was not fully optimised, with users struggling to find and customise features, leading to increased help desk queries.

Additionally, user retention was lower than expected, suggesting activation was not leading to habit formation.

Research Approach:

  • Analytics tracking (Mixpanel, heatmaps, screen recordings) to identify drop-off points.
  • User interviews, moderated and unmoderated usability testing, and feedback collection (Hotjar, help desk tickets) to understand pain points.
  • Competitor analysis to benchmark against industry standards.

Confluence page documenting unmoderated tree test conducted with 15 participants to measure task completion rate.

Framing the Problem & Strategy

To address these issues holistically, I divided the customer journey into five stages:

  1. Website, Viral, Referral – Visits to sign-up conversion rate.
  2. Sign-up – Sign-up completion rate.
  3. Activation – Key actions leading to habit formation.
  4. Upgrade Decision – Upgrade rate.
  5. Retention – Retention rate.

Key metrics were monitored quarterly to track performance and guide iterative improvements.

Confluence page with project progress documentation.

Defining Solutions

Over several months, rolled out dozens of UX improvements across the entire growth funnel through multiple iterations.

Key tasks included:

  • Mapping user journeys to identify friction points.
  • Conducting team ideation sessions to prioritise quick wins and high-impact improvements.
  • Designing low-fidelity wireframes and usability test the solutions.
  • Inform future iterations by A/B testing, monitored feedback, heatmaps, and help desk tickets.

Confluence page documenting usability test conducted.

Impact

Significant improvements were achieved in: Visits to sign-up conversion rate and Sign-up completion rate.

The activation metric was redefined as UX research shed a new light on tasks that lead to the habitual use of the product.

While retention was already high, additional research was conducted to gain deeper insights into user behaviour.

Final Thoughts & Lessons Learned

Small UX optimisations can drive substantial conversion improvements.

Activation plays a crucial role in retention and requires well-defined metrics.

Continuous iteration and data-driven decision-making enhance the user experience.