3 Ways To Revamp Your Onboarding To Maximize Revenue

Personalizing your PLG model to maximize revenue, Using onboarding data to create a repeatable playbook, and bite sized onboarding to maximize revenue

The first two experiments came from Yuriy and his team at Grammarly. We were fortunate to talk to Yuriy who led growth at Grammarly and shared insightful experiments.

Experiment 1: Promoting Premium Features Early to Accelerate Freemium Conversion & Increase Revenue by 20%

Problem:

Freemium products have become a common way to introduce value to end users at no cost. However, a common ramification is that your free users may not realize that a paid version of the product is available. We’ve learned that within your free user base, there exists a segment (10%-30%) that wants the enhanced features and benefits offered in the premium version. Effectively communicating the availability and value of the paid version while catering to the needs of both segments is a great opportunity for the business. 

Experiment: 

While many believe in the PLG approach where you get users trying the product as soon as possible, Yuriy and his team at Grammarly actually found that exposing the paid version and its price point early enough as part of the onboarding experience increases awareness of the premium offering and increases the conversion rate. 

Make users aware of a premium (paid) product during onboarding while allowing users the option to skip the upgrade flow. In practice, this may mean a split-screen choice: "Continue for Free" or "Upgrade." This approach aims to balance the presentation of premium features alongside a still feature-rich free option, increasing the likelihood of conversion for both unaware users and those actively seeking premium benefits.

Impact:

By adopting this approach, approximately 20-30% of a cohort’s upgrades originated from the paywall upsell seen during onboarding. This experiment highlighted the importance of transparently presenting paid features while providing users with a clear path to upgrade without feeling pressured, catering to unaware users and those actively seeking premium benefits.

Experiment 2: Using Onboarding Response Data to Personalize Paid Plan Presentation While Increasing Conversion Rate by 10-20%

Context: A common trend in  B2B SaaS is a 4-to-7-question onboarding flow  or as it’s commonly known, the “get to know your users” flow. It is a series of questions to help qualify your users and group them into targetable segments/personas. This data helps companies personalize downstream user paths like the activation flow, the first session experience, and the upgrade flow. This personalized approach improves engagement and revenue by ensuring a customized journey.

Experiment:

The pricing plans recommended to users are then based on their inputs, making the upgrade recommendations feel personalized and aligned with their individual needs. This also ensures you build trust with customers as they start using your product. 

The few elements of the pricing page I would recommend are: 1) Updating the H1 to “Based on what you told us we would recommend X plan”; 2) highlight the features that are most relevant to the user; 3) update the SKU description to match how they answered the questionnaire. 

Impact:

This personalized pricing approach, coupled with the use of a tailored questionnaire, resulted in a 10-20% increase in upgrade rates for Yuriy and his team at Grammarly. Users feel that you have their best interests at heart when recommending a plan catered to their needs. Usually, the questionnaire during onboarding is underutilized in that all users get the same generic experience regardless of their responses. The key psychological insight here is that, after users invest in responding to each of the onboarding questions, they are subconsciously expecting some sort of pay-off. Your thoughtful plan recommendation becomes that pay-off.

This is just one method on how to best utilize your onboarding data to personalize the experience for your users. This is a repeatable playbook that you can use for every segment and product area (activation, onboarding, first session, cancellation and so on). 

Experiment #3: Splitting contact information on different screens increases the # of quality leads by 15%

Experiment:

Note: Quality Leads: are high intent homeowners who are actively considering finding pros for their home remodeling project 

It is common practice to ask for contact information like name, email address, and phone number for conversion-related screens ex: onboarding, activation, checkout, and other critical screens. Grouping this information together made sense because it all relates to the users profile information

At Houzz, a homeowner shares their project information to get quotes from multiple construction professionals for their kitchen remodel project. Toward the end of entering project details, homeowners have to give their contact info for getting quotes from pros. The old experience asked them for their contact info on one screen. 

The thesis for experimenting with separating this information into three screens was to reduce the cognitive load on the user to input all the information at once. Separating into three screens, one each for name, email address, and phone number reduces the cognitive load on the user of inputting information even though it takes more clicks to go through the end-to-end process.

Impact:

This increased the conversation rate by 15%+ with less than 1 week's work. This is counter-intuitive as it takes more clicks to go through the UX

Learning: you can apply this learning in multiple UX touch-points

• Splitting onboarding info in multiple screens.

• Splitting activation into multiple multiple steps

• Contact form completion 

• Setting up your bank account and making your first deposit (robinhood or wealthfront)

• KYC Process - split it into 10 steps

• Requesting help on a project through Fiverr

We have some great news. We are launching a course for Increasing Revenue Growth for Product Leaders. You will learn how to increase your revenue impact as a Product Leader through real case studies and tactical approach. Sign up for the course if you are interested or share with your company leaders, and you can get it reimbursed. We want to thank you all for all the love and support thus far.