Light users
Date
Nov 2020
Platform
Web
The problem
Organic growth has been a challenge at Guru and our product is continuously perceived as "too expensive" per seat for company-wide use. Admins don’t want to waste money and seats on those who may be using Guru less, yet they still want to share knowledge from Guru with these folks. So the goal of this project was to address viral growth and adoption of Guru.
We approached this from an experimentation mindset by running an A/B experiment where the test group was offered a free Light user option. We hoped that by removing cost as a barrier we’d see an increase in adoption and monthly active user rates. Light users would have limited capabilities, but be able to see company-wide content for free, which would enable collaboration and transparency.
This test was super fast paced, because the idea was to get something out ASAP to test and iterate on. Therefore, I was only given a couple weeks to create and hand off the designs for the experiment that we were attempting to build and release within a month.
The experiment was a huge success, with 69% more users on teams with Light users as well as an 91% higher conversion rate of teams converting from trials to paid plans.
What I did
Initial Research and Discovery, Brainstorming and Sketching, Wireframing and Interaction design, Visual Design, Onboarding Materials, User Research and Data Analysis.
Initial Research & Discovery
There’s been a lot of feedback we’ve been given over the years that lead to this feature within the product. Our team used Product Board to collection and analyze feedback around cost barriers and expansion.
We also did a series of internal interviews with our Sales and Customer Experience teams to better understand friction points for the user around sharing and permissions in Guru as they try to expand company wide.
We got overwhelming feedback that teams desired tiered pricing. They do not want to pay for users read-only users who may be using Guru less.
“Our employees want to be able to find content more easily within the mobile and web experience. Ideally, there would be a search function which would allow people to search for specifics.”
“The lack of a search when looking at for the content was also cumbersome. They want to make it easier for members to find all of our digital content without scrolling through the app.”
Sketching, wireframes, and feedback
This was an extremely fast paced project. I had to get through brainstorming and sketching, wire-framing, getting internal feedback, creating visual designs and functional specs and handoff the project within a couple weeks.
Through this process I really had to focus on creating the most simple and low scope designs possible so that development would be able to build this feature within a month. Despite being simple, the designs still had to be usable and effective at enticing folks to use the Light users feature.
Despite the tight timeline, I did not skip any of my usual steps. I started off by brainstorming and sketching out my ideas. I identified that the main areas of the app that needed to be adjusted for this new user type was our invite users modal, the all members screen, and our billing pages.
Once I sketched out my thoughts, I was able to start visualizing and wireframing them. I always like to bring my design team and PM and Engineers in early in the process. I presented my designs to these groups for feedback on usability and feasibility. At this stage I would normally also like to test my designs on users before they get built, but we weren’t given the time to do so with this project. We instead were given an opportunity to conduct research on users when the experiment was built and launched.
Initial design handoff
After getting feedback, I was able to refine my designs and create visuals. I always include detailed functional specs within my handoff so that the engineers can have a clear sense of what they need to do without needing to read long functional documentation.
I have an extremely close relationship with my developers, where they feel comfortable coming to me when they have any design questions or feasibility issues. I’m happy to collaborate with them, hear their ideas, and work with them to find the best solutions. I meet with development frequently to assess their progress and make tweaks on the fly when necessary.
Success metrics
Extensive data analysis was done throughout the duration of the experiment. We compared the test teams that had the Light user feature on against the control teams that did not include this feature. We were mainly looking at the number of users per team, how active the users were, monthly recurring revenue rates, and conversion rates (when trials convert to paying teams). We found that the test teams that had the Light users feature did in fact perform higher in all of these areas. This proved that the test was a success and removing cost barriers did aid in conversion and expansion!
+35%
Total Monthly recurring revenue
+69%
Average users per team
+254%
User expansion rate
+91%
Total conversion (trial to paid)
Optimizations for launch
Once we had a good understanding of how Light users was being used, we were able to fill in the gaps. We analyzed the data, and also had frequent chats with customers to understand what was missing from the Light users feature. We decided to focus on optimizing expansion of teams and conversion of Light users to paid Core users. This led to a series of smaller projects and enhancements that required their own set of research and discovery, competitive analysis, interviews, and so on to design and implement.
Increase monthly active user rate:
One of our goals was to remove friction and enable teams to expand and increase our monthly active user rates. Non-guru users encounter Guru throughout their day, and we were looking to tap into those natural workflows to increase the likelihood that a user will join their Guru team.
We primarily focused on areas where non-guru users are exposed to Guru but are blocked from taking action. For example, when they are sent a Guru card but don’t have an account in Guru, they are taken to our general sign in page with no context of why or what happened. This page is seen by 50k users a month, so we really wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to reach these potential users and encourage them to sign up for Guru. I designed a more contextual, personalized, and inviting sign up page to test if our MAU increased.
Changes included the following:
Changed “Sign in” to “Sign up” for users to more quickly create an account.
Removed the language “Welcome back to Guru,” because it doesn’t pertain to new users.
Included the title of the Card they were sent, along with their team name to entice them to join their teammates and get access to that Card.
Replaced ambiguous imagery about trust status of Cards, which wouldn’t mean much to a new user, with imagery pertaining to sharing content across teams.
Cross-functional collaboration
We also wanted to focus on monetization flows, and think through how to make it easier and more alluring for Light users to convert to paid Core users. I was able to take this broad idea and run with it, handling the project end to end.
What I did
Conducted internal interviews with CSMs, support, and the admins of our own Guru team
Conducted thorough competitive analysis on growth and monetization in other Saas products
Worked through various design concepts that ranged from high to low development lift
Facilitated a cross functional brainstorm with my team as well as the growth team to foster ideas and feedback from a diverse group.
The Brainstorm
I split the group up into two user persona groups, Light users and Admins. I then had them create post it notes on the pros and cons of each of five concepts from their persona’s perspective, and also allowed them to voice any other concepts that they had thought of. I was able to come away from the session with some great insights and ideas from the group, and did it while fostering more communication and collaboration between our two teams.
Launch to all new teams
The Light users experiment performed so successfully that we decided to launch the Light users feature to all new and current teams! Our team continued to work through iterations and optimizations of the Light users project.
Future focus:
Optimizing conversion of Light users to paid Core users
Opening up our permissions to facilitate organic growth