Learn how we managed to guide more novice creators into Podcastle by making onboarding a fast and meaningful step: with less forms to fill and more triage to the features they actually need.
Context
Podcastle is an awesome platform for audio and video podcast creation. Equipped with manual and AI editing/enhancements it makes it possible for anyone to start a podcast.
Truth be told, I love working on onboardings: there is nothing quite like welcoming people into the product and making sure they are set up for a fruitful path. This time, I was fortunate to work with a team that was excited to change the old ways, to say the least.
It all started with a wider Activation initiative, when we first mapped several touch points where we encounter drop off and churn. With only two thirds of users completing onboarding, this top-funnel step was made a priority from the get go.
Let's zoom in and see how onboarding wizard revamp went on. (It went well!)
*To make this case public some details had to be left out or made high-level.
Goals
Make onboarding faster and more meaningful for new users; Increase PQLs; Increase trial enrollment rate
Contribution
Besides working on data analysis with Amplitude and UX & UI. I led the collaborative Design Sprint and facilitated 4 consecutive workshops with the team
Outcomes
Significantly more users completed onboarding. First session’s duration and the number of features users experience has also went up. Positive impact on trial enrollment rates.
Trigger/Problem
Every extra step in onboarding wizard like naming the workspace delayed people from experiencing the core - powerful audio and video editors.
After an audit and a deep dive into data we defined several crucial issues:
Around a third of users didn't even make it to the product and got lost in the wizard
Onboarding featured 7 questions that did not impact user's experience
After onboarding wizard all users were directed to the same screen - app's home page - regardless of their goals and preferred medium of choice (audio or video production)
A lot of our users are novice to audiovisual creation and we provided close to zero help with finding their way around
We then researched close competition, other creator products and went through past interviews to understand what pitfalls users were facing in the first steps of the journey.
Take a look at the old onboarding and scroll to see how it changed.
Solution
Solution came to fruition during a collaborative Design Sprint, which included both product and marketing folks.
We minimized onboarding to 3 steps, introduced a clearer step counter to signal that onboarding is fast, fetched user's name from their email to speed up generating names for the workspace they are creating.
Most importantly now onboarding actually helped user to start: based on user's stated goal they landed in a specific place of the app.
We validated our assumptions by running a major A/B test with a new onboarding, and then tested smaller variants.
Below you will find the first interactive prototype we created to showcase all the steps: it shows an individual user's path. The last step is a triage that will land user in a specific place on the app - according to their goal.
Triage based on their input would direct users to a specific parts of the platform.
Since at that time we didn't have a fully responsive mobile web dashboard, our mobile traffic solution had to nudge people to either download the iOS app or proceed on desktop. We offered an option to send a Desktop link which will trigger an email reminder to try Podcastle on desktop.
Details
I'd like to offer some further reflections on onboarding people into a creative platform in 2025. Today audiovisual field is a jungle, and AI is driving the scene. There are tens of new audiovisual apps that rely on third party models for the core offering.
Most of them are in an aggressive User Growth stage. Backed by VC, they can afford to offer a lot to free tier users or offer extensive free trials; as always, the strategy is to monetize loyal free users at a later stage.
These apps guide a person from sign up to product in literal seconds and don't tend to ask practically anything on the first log in. Free trials are often automatic and require no credit card or further setup. I believe, these trends are changing the "standards" and push us into lightening fast, production focused onboarding flows instead of more traditional "customization-focused" onboarding wizards.
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Please inquire more information about the process, decision making and outcomes.