Intro

Boosting Elevate’s Onboarding Through a Setup Guide

Elevate, our new Sales Coaching product, faced onboarding challenges causing inefficiencies and low adoption. I designed a guided setup that resulted in 76% reduction in Setup Time

ROLE:

UX Designer

TEAM:

5 Engineers and 1 PM

DELIVERABLES:

Create a completely new Setup Guide and Onboarding User research study

TIME:

3 months

GOAL:

Increase adoption and decrease setup time for Elevate by improving onboarding efficiency

Tools

Research

Uncovering Pain Points

To pinpoint where users struggle, I conducted: 8 Usability Tests and 12 User Interviews revealing:

Lost in onboarding

There were too many separate places to configure features, making the setup fragmented and inefficient.

No guidance

Users had no sense of direction, leading to frustration and abandonment.

Time-consuming

Because the flow was messy, some users gave up halfway through due to time constraints.

Research

Rethinking the Onboarding Experience

I started to explore UX best practices and then mapped the current end-to-end user journey to pinpoint friction points and for onboarding optimization.

"The best onboarding experiences help users accomplish key tasks with minimal effort."

Smart Interface Design Patterns

"Too many steps and unclear guidance frustrate users."

User Pilot

"Introduce complexity gradually and provide help when users need it."

UX Matters

"Onboarding should guide users while allowing them to explore at their own pace."

Chameleon

Simplified illustration of the current flow

Simplified illustration of the User Journey

Ideation

Testing and iterating

Through iterative design, user testing and navigating complex step dependencies with a non-linear backend many ideas were discarded.

Auto-detect Setup

Technical costs prevented implementing auto-completion/suggestions for existing Membrain users.

Should the guide be expandable?

Users found it difficult and intrusive.

Use the main part of the screen?

Users feared losing progress when navigating elsewhere

Ideation

The Three Key Fixes

After extensive testing I developed three key components to address the onboarding challenges:

1. Centralized Setup Guide

Role-based onboarding and auto-completes were too costly. A centralized setup guide, streamlining steps into a clear flow, proved the most efficient solution.

Because of technical limitations this was the best flow we could build in the first iteration

We have our help center to the right in the product which streamlined implementation and provided scalability for other product areas.

2. Step-by-Step Progress Indicator

Users abandoned setup due to lacking progress visibility. A step-by-step progress tracker proved the best solution, keeping users informed and engaged.

I made sure the User saw the progress

3. Creating Templates and new Dialogs

Manual setup was slow and frustrating. I introduced pre-built templates and guiding dialogs, reducing effort while keeping customization options intact.

One of many new dialogs

Outcome

From Insights to Impact

76% reduction in Setup Time

Thanks to Templates and new dialogs I significantly decreased Setup time

2 hours saved per onboarding

For each Customer Success manager

Adoption

The initiative has just been implemented and therefore I am waiting for adoption metrics

Learnings

This project reinforced how onboarding design improves both user experience and business value.

Moving forward, I’d explore progressive onboarding tailored to user needs instead of a single linear flow.