Reducing onboarding abandonment by 83%

Kotae, which means "answer" in Japanese (答), is an agentic assistant for business websites. It is customizable, easy-to-set-up, and targeted toward mid-sized businesses and organizations.

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Onboarding Revamp

Optimizing onboarding to reduce abandonment rate

Platform Redesign

Modernizing interactions and platform user interface

Problem Overview

70% of visitors abandoned the onboarding flow the moment a credit card was required.
Once inside the platform, users were often unsure of what to do first, and found the features unclear.
The average time to completion was ~12min.

Results

83% fewer

Abandonments

2.5x faster

Time-to-completion

"More fun"

Positive feedback

The original onboarding flow

While this flow successfully funneled users toward account setup, it was clearly producing friction by asking too much of users before bringing them to the product itself.

To confirm this, we conducted a handful of user interviews and tests, while also looking at website traffic data.

Data Observations and Interviews

We looked at website traffic data and also asked 17 individuals who are familiar with customer service and own a website, but have not heard of Kotae before.

70% of visitors abandoned the onboarding flow the moment a credit card was required.
Once inside the platform, users were often unsure of what to do first, and found the features unclear.
The average time to completion was ~12min.

Oh I have to put my credit card in already? I don’t even know what I can do with [Kotae] yet.

What am I supposed to do now? How can I try the product or see how it works?

Design solution

The inspiration of this solution was inspired by Apple's approach to their retail stores:

Get users to touch and personalize the product as soon as possible.
Delay any commitments such as an email or credit card until after the free trial has expired.
Educate the users on the basic, essential features and capabilities by incorporating them into the onboarding.

Stage 1: Test your Website

One less step

For an even more seamless experience and a lower barrier to entry, I proposed placing this input field directly below the homepage hero for easier access.

Stage 2: Customize Kotae

Preview elements float, shift, and change according to color selection