Improve your first time user's experience

At MoreApp we have a fantastic product to make it easy for companies to get rid of their paper forms. One of the most important ways to achieve that goal is have a great user experience. A few weeks ago we greatly improved our first time user's experience, it took us only 2 days, a handful of volunteers and a dedicated team. The results are astounding! We went from 10% to 70%+ conversion, want to know how? Read on!

First impressions

When a user would sign up at www.moreapp.com the following steps would be followed

• A confirmation mail would be sent
• After confirmation their account could be create and the user arrived at the platform
• As a first time user the platform would prompt the user if they would like to take the tour
• If yes, the user would be taken on a tour that showcased all steps needed to create a folder, add a form, build the form, give a user access and publish the form

For a time this was live and we assumed that this covered the user's need, since from a technical standpoint the user needed to know these things.

Well, you know what they say about assumptions.

We decided that since we test a lot of things already, it was about time to test the user's experience too.

Day one

The first day all team members gathered and we explained what the objective was: test our user's experience and if need be, optimize the experience immediately. It's very important to get the goals clear and in what time frame these goals need to be achieved.

We asked two volunteers to complete a simple task: "You have heard about MoreApp and it is now your job to get familiar with the product". We simply observed our volunteers and noted every step carefully and we encouraged them think aloud so that we could better understand their thought process.

After that, we stood in front of the whiteboard and we gathered all our notes and came up with no less than 40 points that came up.
Since covering all 40 point would consume more time than our time slot of two days we did the following:

• Find common problems
• Sketch an alternative (possibly, better) flow

Everyone sketched their alternatives and presented them shortly to each other. After the presentations we mixed and matched the solutions and came up with an -- in our view -- improved flow.

Late in the afternoon we used the Marvel app to convert our sketches into an interactive flow.

Day two

We asked our volunteers to check out the interactive flow and asked their opinions. After hearing their positive reaction we were confident that we were on the right track. So we went ahead and implemented all the changes. Our improved flow was much simpler, a user can now go to the website and then:

• After clicking sign up, they immediately get an account and are logged into the platform. A confirmation mail mail is still sent, but it is not necessary to confirm immediately
• A folder, with form and user access is already prepared and the user is asked to check it out on their mobile device.

By simplifying the sign up process and using a prepared form the user is not bothered with all those things at that time.

The results were really amazing, we went from 10% to 60% conversion in just two days. I can definitely recommend everyone to take a step back once in a while and zoom in on one specific part of their product and make that part as awesome as possible.

Do you have similar experiences? Or do you have any tips on how to make a product even better?

Robin van Breukelen - CTO at MoreApp