Divvy onboarding

context

Divvy offers a financial management platform that combines corporate credit cards with software to help businesses manage and track expenses in real-time. It provides enhanced control over budgets and integrates with accounting systems for streamlined financial operations.

team

Product Manager
Product Designer (me)
Dev Lead
Backend Developers (2)
Front-End Developers (2)
Mobile Developer (1)

Methods

Contextual inquiry, customer support chat analysis, internal team interview, user journey mapping, wireframing, user testing, prototyping, and interaction design

Empathize

A typical scenario for a new user: upon downloading the Divvy app, they find themselves in an unfamiliar environment with no clear guidance on how to begin. Their efforts to find their way around the app and through various support pages only lead to frustration. Feeling overwhelmed, the user ultimately decides to put off using the app. This initial friction was a barrier preventing users from leveraging Divvy's features effectively.

define

Our team kicked off by gathering insights from our customer service teams and looking through support tickets. With a tight deadline looming, we didn't have the chance to speak directly with users, which steered us toward using the feedback we already had. Our earlier research into our onboarding process made one thing clear, users needed a more straightforward and guided introduction.

The challenge was simple; we needed to shorten the time it took for a new user to go from logging in to making their first transaction. Given just two months to work with, we set out to create an in-app onboarding process that was both quick and effective. This new setup had to not only teach users how to use the platform but also get them to their first financial transaction smoothly and swiftly.

ideate

We explored several onboarding methods (see below) before settling on a dedicated onboarding page that users would see upon first login. This page would present users with digestible steps or lessons, allowing them to learn at their own pace without overwhelming them. We chose to integrate this with Pendo—a tool we had previously used for walkthroughs—to enhance the learning experience. Although the two systems couldn’t communicate directly, we devised creative solutions to synchronize user progress across both platforms, such as delayed task completion indicators.

prototype & testing

Initial wireframes received positive feedback from a select group of users. We proceeded to develop high-fidelity designs and build out the onboarding steps in Pendo. My product manager and I closely collaborated to ensure the onboarding content was engaging and informative.

Outcome

The redesigned onboarding process achieved a 95% engagement rate, with a notable 5% increase in user spend in the first month post-onboarding. Its success led to an unexpected request from our customer support team—they wanted the feature available for long-standing users as well. This demand was so persistent that we developed a new feature allowing internal teams to reactivate the onboarding guide for any account, catering to users who might have initially dismissed the guide or who had joined before its introduction.

This project not only improved the initial user experience but also demonstrated the importance of accessible, user-friendly onboarding. By effectively guiding new users through their first interactions with Divvy, we significantly reduced initial friction and enhanced overall engagement, proving that a well-crafted onboarding experience is crucial for user retention and satisfaction.