How Airtable, a Desktop-First Tool, Unlocked Mobile to Drive Massive Growth

See how Airtable revamped their onboarding to boost revenue

Most B2B companies get stuck in a desktop-only loop, missing out on a valuable revenue opportunity from mobile. Even though acquisition often happens on mobile, many B2B products overlook the potential of mobile as a growth driver. By uncovering the right user experience on mobile, businesses can drive an increase in revenue.

Airtable is a platform for building internal business applications to do everything from running startup operations to managing the rollout of global TV campaigns to planning events all without having to know how to code. The platform attracts a broad user base, including operations managers, project coordinators, and marketing teams who need customized workflows to keep projects running smoothly.

Business Model

Airtable uses a tiered subscription model to generate revenue. It offers a Free Plan with limited records to attract users, then upsells to paid plans like Team ($20/user/month) and Business ($45/user/month), which include advanced features like more records, automation runs, and premium integrations. For large organizations, the Enterprise Plan provides customized solutions with enhanced security and admin controls.

Introducing Kelly

Introducing Kelly O'Shaughnessy, Head of Core Product and Growth at Airtable, where she leads initiatives to drive revenue growth from self-serve channels and deepen customer engagement. Prior to that, she worked at Uber and led the mobility incubator focused on unlocking new transportation adjacencies (car rentals and reservations).

Problem

Current Funnel

Despite Airtable being primarily a desktop product, a significant portion of new users signed up on their mobile app—around 30%—with an even higher percentage when looking at users acquired through paid ads.

Airtable faced issues with its mobile app onboarding, where users were not activating. Because less users were activating on the mobile app this prevented users from progressing to the web platform to make their final purchase.

Activation is defined as a workspace with 2 or more active users in week 4 post-signup.

Issues with the Current Mobile App experience

The Airtable team identified several issues with the existing mobile app experience that were contributing to high churn rates.

Problem #1: Sign Up Prior to Showcasing value

Required users to sign up before they could experience any value, which created friction and contributed to drop-off. This approach made it harder to build trust and demonstrate Airtable's capabilities, resulting in users abandoning the process before onboarding, activating or transitioning to the web.

Problem #2: Onboarding Focused on Breadth Instead of Depth

In a user's onboarding, the goal should be to help them achieve their specific job to be done—the primary task or problem they’re trying to solve. Showcasing the full range of a product’s capabilities or use cases may seem like a way to showcase all the functionality, but it often overwhelms them instead. For Airtable, this breadth distracted users from understanding how the platform could help with their immediate needs, leading to confusion and drop-offs.

One common sentiment echoed in feedback was, “I have no idea what Airtable is or what to use it for, and this screen doesn’t help.”

Problem #3: Confusing First Time User Experience (FTUX)

The activation process did not include any hands-on guidance for building something within the app.

Upon signing in, users were taken directly to a blank homepage without any context, access to templates nor instructions.

The Solution

The Airtable team implemented the following changes:

1. Revamped Intro Screens to Build Trust: Added new intro screens to clearly explain Airtable’s value and key use cases prior to sign-up to build trust.

2. New Activation Flow Focused on Building: Introduced a guided activation flow that focused on helping users complete a simple project. The focus was on a single project management template.

3. Improve the First Time User Experience: Redesigned the initial landing experience to provide more contextual guidance.

Revamped Intro Screens on the App

Step by Step Airtable Creation Build Experience

Introduced a step-by-step flow to get the user to focus on a single project management use case:

First Time User Experience

The first time user experience was redesigned to focus on showcasing 4 popular mobile view types for the project management use case – the form, calendar, dashboard, and list which made it more intuitive for users by visually showcasing project timelines and tasks.

This approach not only showcased Airtable’s value proposition more clearly, but also proved a far more engaging and easier to understand experience than the blank homepage.

The Impact

• Improved Upgrade Rate: A 15% increase in the upgrade rate for users in the treatment group.

• Increased Focus on Mobile:

  • Mobile Activation: More resources were allocated to mobile development, specifically targeting activation as a way to drive overall Airtable growth.

  • Expanded Product Roadmap: Product roadmaps, previously web-centric, now include parallel priorities for both web and mobile, reflecting the growing importance of mobile.

  • Reinvigorated Mobile Team: The mobile team transitioned from solely supporting core features to also driving growth initiatives, starting with acquisition and onboarding. This gave the entire team a new sense of purpose and motivation.

Guiding Principles for Implementing Similar Changes

• Establish core needs between platforms by using the Jobs to be Done framework
  Identify the primary tasks users need to accomplish on mobile, especially those they’re likely to engage with on the go. Instead of replicating the desktop experience, streamline features to solve essential, mobile-specific needs effectively.

• Align Onboarding with a Single, High-Value Use Case
  Focus on a single, impactful use case during onboarding to help users experience value quickly. Rather than overwhelming users with multiple options.

• Trust is the Ultimate Shortcut
  Establishing trust early through clear messaging and well-designed intro screens makes users more likely to engage with your product. When users feel confident, they’re more willing to invest time exploring further.

• Encourage Platform Transitions Only After Establishing Value
  Before asking users to make a switch provide enough value.

• First Principles Thinking
  Start by asking what the simplest path is for users to achieve success, then build the experience around that fundamental need.

Conclusion

This win not only delivered immediate improvements but also laid the foundation for a broader roadmap to expand on these successes. The team began by designing new initiatives to capitalize on the insights from the experiment:

1. Push Mobile Web Users to the App: The team focused on driving mobile web users to download the app and activate there, delaying the "push to desktop" transition until further down the funnel.

2. Introduce Onboarding on Mobile Web: A simplified version of the onboarding experience was added to mobile web, guiding users through initial steps before prompting them to transition to either the app or desktop for full activation and conversion.

By starting small and proving the value of investing in mobile, Airtable was able to test their approach without committing to high development projects first.

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