Improving Intellect App’s Onboarding to Reduce Churn

What do people use the Intellect app for?

Imagine you’re going through a rough patch, feeling anxious, depressed, low, overwhelmed, or just not 100%. Instead of wasting your precious time overthinking or waiting to talk to the right person, you open the Intellect app and look for a relevant learning path which can be anything from reacting in conflicts, regulating emotions — to beating procrastination.

What is the problem?

The problem is that when a person is looking for emotional & mental help online, they’re not sure what they’re looking for. They’re anxious and impatient. They would go ahead with whatever makes them feel good in the least time possible.

  1. Go through a dozen websites and apps, and maybe land at Intellect at some point.

What was the process like?

Before I could start ‘rethinking’ the onboarding experience for the Intellect app, it was essential for me to thoroughly understand how it currently works. So I installed the app and started exploring all the existing user flows and screens. Some things that I wanted to understand were,

  • How do users get onboarded on the app?
  • How does personalization work? How does the app respond to the data being asked?

Competitor Analysis

After understanding Intellect, I looked for other mental wellness apps that offered similar services users. It seemed to me like a good idea to see how other apps are doing things that I am trying to achieve. It gave me a different perspective on things and helped me to think in multiple directions. Some of the apps that I referred to were, Calm, Headspace, BetterMe and InnerHour.

Understanding Users

In order to be able to decide what onboarding experience to provide the users with, it was important to understand what would make them trust the app and continue using it. To find that out, I did some googling and came across a lot of information. Some things I got to know were:

  • For someone seeking emotional/mental help, a well-timed pat on the back can simply feel good to receive, especially when it’s for a meaningful accomplishment. Hope.
  • Stressed/anxious people go through short attention spans. If how the app helps users isn’t explicitly clear right out of the gate, we are at a high risk losing them. 25% of users abandon an app after just one use.
  • People have a better chance of returning if the value of the app is relayed faster to them.

Current Screens

How did I solve the problem?

Find below the screens I designed along with the design decisions I made. Do keep in mind that we are solving for optimizing retention rates & lowering churn. This is just the onboarding of the app so the changes will be minute and super subtle.

Carousel

Sign Up Flows

Personalization Questionnaire

The user values questionnaires when they’re guaranteed that their information & time will

  1. Make their experience better

Home Screen & Loading Screens

  • Home screen does not change even after answering the questionnaire. There is no difference in the home screen if skip everything and jump directly. Again, makes the user feel like they’ve wasted their time
  • The app should not give the feeling of not being heard to the user. If they’re making effort to give some data on the app, make sure it is of value

Learnings

Minute changes make a lot of difference to the onboarding & retention rates of apps.

References:

--

--

1xTop Writer. VR, Product & Design. Email: emailtosumeetk(at)gmail.com.

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store