Onboarding CRO

Simplifying Onboarding for a Cloud SaaS Platform

GTM team saw onboarding conversion jump from
(20–30%) → (60–70%)
0 %

Industry

B2B, SAAS, Cloud 

Scope

Redesign | UX Research | Conversion Strategy

Duration

2 weeks

Tools

Figma , Figjam, Miro

The Problem

This technical barrier frustrated non-technical users (like managers), overwhelmed first-time visitors, and significantly impacted the go-to-market team's ability to convert new prospects. As a result, onboarding completion rates dropped, and only 20–30% of engaged leads successfully activated the product.

Challenge

Design an onboarding experience that accommodates multiple user personas — from non-technical managers to technical cloud engineers — while reducing friction, minimizing effort, and clearly demonstrating product value within minutes.

Approach

To address the onboarding friction, I followed a structured STAR 🌟 Approach to s rooted in Design Thinking and Lean UX principles

Design Thinking

Empathize

The existing onboarding flow was overwhelming and overly technical for new users across all personas. Regardless of their role, every user was forced to go through a multi-step technical setup, including

  • Infrastructure connections
  • Git repository setup
  • Workflow creation
  • Deployment and Validation

The GTM team reported that out of every 10 prospects, only 2–3 were successfully onboarded, primarily due to the complexity and lack of flexibility in the onboarding experience.

  • High drop-off rates during onboarding
  • Significant frustration among non-technical personas
  • Poor conversion metrics for the go-to-market (GTM) team

Define

Reframing the Challenge

How might we design a simplified onboarding flow that welcomes both technical and non-technical users, and allows them to see immediate value — without requiring complex setup?

Ideate

Research and Insight-Driven Concepts

I led a focused discovery phase:

  • Qualitative interviews and Quantitative Surveys
  • Usability Workshops to monitor the friction points with Heat map analysis
  • Competitive anlaysis

Created persona maps and clarified motivations

  • Cloud Engineers: Seek to assess system health and risks
  • Managers: Want a high-level report to assign action items downstream

Design

The New Experience

We redesigned the onboarding to focus on passive value discovery before any setup:

  • Create an Organization
  • Connect Infrastructure

This insight-based approach allowed users to:

  • See instant value without configuration fatigue
  • Share actionable reports with internal teams (like developers)
  • Take remediation steps only if and when needed

Outcome

Users reported taking faster, more informed actions
0 %
Improvement in turnaround time for identifying and solving platform issues
0 %
First time Product users figured out the Issues in the first go
0 %
4/5 - (1 vote)