Maximizing User Adoption with Design Strategy for Product-Led Growth

In my experience of working with SaaS firms over the past 2 decades, one key differentiator that has helped firms grow exponentially is ‘leveraging UX UI Design Strategy to drive Product-led Growth’. 

And when I say design strategy, I don’t mean just optimizing functional workflows and enriching aesthetics; I mean design that drives tangible value to the users, and creates experiences while balancing business goals and product roadmap.

 

Three areas where UX UI design strategy plays a catalytic role are:

Increasing User Adoption by simplifying onboarding and enhancing user satisfaction

Users have a defined tolerance threshold for the onboarding process. If users feel overwhelmed when signing up on the platform, that’s a surefire way to lose them.

A user’s tolerance to onboarding is also contextual – it changes depending on the platform type. Ensuring that the experience is way under the tolerance threshold of the user increases user adoption significantly. 

For instance, a Loan Processing SaaS platform approached us to simplify their onboarding process and enable Product-Led Growth.  

The platform’s onboarding process was so challenging that users needed customer support to input information, follow the process, and submit the application. They would either take hours to complete the application or give up mid-way.

As a result, the process was entirely sales-driven and could not drive the expected business growth.

Our UX UI design solution focused on moving from a support-intensive onboarding process to a product-led onboarding.  We did the following:

• Identified the mandatory information for the onboarding process
• Facilitated KYC through third-party integrations

The loan processing time was slashed by 2000%—yes, you read that right—which was well under the users’ tolerance level and greatly increased the platform’s user adoption. 

Accelerating time to value for the user

Another key pain point we addressed was the user’s time to value.

Lengthy forms and an even longer loan processing time led to user frustration. 

Sometimes the turnaround time to simply get their loan eligibility status and loan amount exceeded 48 – 72 hours!  

But users don’t want to be kept waiting. People’s patience for experiencing value is decreasing every day, just like how attention spans are getting shorter.

From a design standpoint, we need to focus on reducing time to value (TTV) to make users happier. This increases user retention and speeds up the time it takes for users to trust the platform.

For example, on most loan-processing platforms, a user needs to fill out a long application and wait more than 2 – 3 weeks for the loan eligibility result. 

To solve this and reduce TTV, we integrated AI/ML capabilities during onboarding. The solution we implemented was split into 3 parts: 

• Conversational AI supported by Voice Input 
• Simultaneous Voice Input to streamline the data collection
• Real-time and dynamic updates on loan eligibility and loan amounts 

Users were able to complete a process as complex as a loan application through a conversation. It was simple and quick. Talk about instant gratification!

The solutions delivered immediate value and encouraged further customer engagement with the business. Over time the accuracy of the loan eligibility status also improved.

Cultivate value-driven experiences to foster user loyalty

We tend to interact more with those products that we feel understand us and make our lives easier.

Without emotional connect, loyalty seldom exists.

However, this emotional connection does not just ‘happen.’.

It must be integrated into the user experience. Here’s how:

The Loan Processing SaaS platform was accessible across multiple devices, like iPads, laptops, and mobile phones. Ensuring the user experience was consistent and enriching was critical. 

Conversational AI and voice input enabled the platform to be empathetic toward the user by creating a dialogue-like experience, and real-time updates provided instant gratification. Users experienced value quickly.

The compound effect created an emotional connection between the user and the platform that was so strong that it skyrocketed retention and loyalty. 

The effects of the emotionally enriching user experience were as follows: 

• Increase in the number of users completing the loan application
• Increase in the number of users actively engaging with the platform on a daily basis
• Increase in the number of users seeking further engagement with the platform to proceed with a home loan

Over time, happy customers sharing their experiences boosted the perceived value of the platform. And when the product delivered more than users expected, they stuck around longer.

Retention doesn’t begin after a user has been onboarded,
it actually starts with user onboarding.

To achieve PLG, we need to focus on crafting intelligent platforms that can anticipate, even predict, the user’s needs from the get-go. 

Understand what users are trying to achieve with the product, and personalize the experience, effectively allowing your product to serve its purpose. 

Only when we accurately predict these needs, does the user experience a sense of ease from the very first interaction with the product/platform.