Ecamm Live is the leading video production studio built for Mac. But while its established fans love the powerful feature-rich software, new customers were feeling overwhelmed, and that was causing some to stop using the product.
The Ecamm team knew they needed to tweak their onboarding process, but they didn’t agree on where the problems were let alone how to solve them. Ecamm needed an onboarding plan that could bring them together and offer a set of changes they could all agree on.
The Ecamm team asked me to give them an Onboarding Audit to understand the pain points of customers and provide a Trial to Paid Growth Plan to improve trial-to-paid conversion.
We needed to better understand what the onboarding process was like for new users in a couple of key audiences, and where we could make changes to improve our trial to subscriber conversion rate.
The result was validation of their concerns about customer pain points and an actionable strategy for how to improve their onboarding strategy.
Implementing my recommendations grew their onboarding conversion by 20%.
Background
Ecamm has a long history of building useful and popular apps. The main product that they currently offer is Ecamm Live, a full OS X production studio for live streaming and video. It offers its users all the tools they need for producing professional streaming video content.
Ecamm’s well-designed product has earned them a passionate and loyal customer base. The product has an engaged community of die-hard video enthusiasts that not only interact with each other but also promote Ecamm Live to others. This community has become a powerful lead generation engine.
Problem: Ecamm’s powerful features made it hard to use for some new sign-ups
But the blessing of word-of-mouth eventually created a challenge. As Ecamm becomes increasingly popular, its customer base has expanded to include people who are new to creating video content.
A new audience segment wasn’t comfortable with video
The surge in streaming video has meant that a number of new creators are entering the space. This is a new group of customers who aren’t just new to the product, but who are new to the entire process of creating video content. Many of them find it overwhelming.
As Katie put it:
Ecamm has this voracious fan and customer base. Most people who are advocates also know a lot about video or have a passion for it. But not all our new customers were comfortable with video. We knew we were losing a percentage of customers just because video is overwhelming.
New signups weren’t finding the resources they needed to be successful
Because they were new to video, these customers needed support to be successful. They needed resources and guidance, not just to use the product, but also just to learn the basics of creating compelling video content. Ecamm has a number of resources already available, from tutorials to a support knowledge base, but new users were facing barriers to accessing those resources.
As Katie put it:
We were hearing feedback from customers that they had a lot of questions that could be easily answered with the resources we had, but we weren’t able to best connect the dots to help them find the information they needed. We were wasting people’s time—both our support’s time and that of our customers.
Onboarding flows were one-size-fits-all
The onboarding that Ecamm had was useful, but it wasn’t segmented. The team was not offering a personalized onboarding flow based on their customers’ jobs to be done.
Katie says:
We have a few email onboarding flows where we serviced the common questions with articles and resources. But it was going out as a one-size fits all email to everyone. That’s not ideal.
The team didn’t agree on where the holes in onboarding were
The Ecamm team realized that in order to help this new group of users be successful, they would have to change how they onboarded new users. But they didn’t agree on what needed to change.
Some of the team felt like the app was simple. But as we added features, onboarding became more of a conversation, but we didn’t fully realize what the onboarding experience was like for customers.
Solution: Develop a plan to overhaul the onboarding process
Ecamm decided this was the year that they would make improvements to onboarding and the marketing structure that supported it. They approached me to help them design a process that helped retain trial users and boost conversions to the paid plans.
Approaching onboarding and fixing the issues we knew we had was really high on our list of priorities to accomplish this year.
An onboarding audit
We started with an onboarding audit, where I helped Ecamm identify holes in the onboarding process and where customers were getting lost.
We needed someone to confirm what we were seeing, and highlight anything that we might be missing.
We started by identifying and refining their goals, reviewing their current strategy, and looking for opportunities that they had not yet leveraged. I then presented an annotated screen-by-screen onboarding walk-through so the team could see where there were points of friction and where the current process didn’t align with customer expectations.
A step-by-step plan for implementing better onboarding
Next, I provided a straightforward action plan so Ecamm had a clear strategy for improving their onboarding.
This included the desired outcomes of each customer segment, the milestones that each segment needed to hit to be successful with the product, any gaps that existed in the current onboarding flow, and a prioritized list of actionable steps to close the gaps.
Results: Ecamm grew trial to paid conversion by 20%
While the 20% increase meant a lot more revenue growth, getting to that growth was straightforward.
An easy to follow checklist to improve onboarding
Ecamm was grateful to have a ready-made solution for improving their onboarding. They appreciated the step-by-step guidance that was prioritized for them.
Kareem gave us a map for what to do next, which was the most helpful. We feel like we have a checklist of what we need to do now.
The team became aligned on priorities
Ecamm also benefitted from the process of the audit. One of the challenges for the team was that there wasn’t a single vision for how to improve onboarding. Participating in the development of the Onboarding Growth Plan helped rally the team around a single vision and agree on the required next steps.
We all sat in on those meetings, we saw the challenges that Kareem was seeing as he was walking through our product. Afterward, we didn’t need to spend time debating back and forth about what was the highest priority. The process cultivated a level of buy-in that will make the implementation process faster and easier.
They obtained a fresh, expert perspective
Ecamm noted that one of the most valuable pieces of the audit was that I brought fresh eyes. When you know your product inside and out, it can be difficult to understand the experience of customers who are completely unfamiliar with your product. I was able to provide the Ecamm team with a fresh outlook to help them better connect with their customers’ challenges and needs.
Having that process of walking through the onboarding with Kareem, as he did it for the first time, and seeing where he was looking for things and where he wasn’t finding things was really valuable.
Ecamm is a satisfied customer
I would absolutely recommend Kareem. He gave us a really seamless experience, and it didn’t require a ton of time on our end. When we did join in, the conversation and outcomes were super helpful to us. Plus, we grew conversion by 20%!
Upgrade your onboarding to drive trial-to-paid conversion
Your customers will convert from a free trial to a paid subscription if they get enough value from your product. An effective onboarding process helps customers see your product’s value.
I can design you an onboarding flow that gets customers to their “aha!” moment and see your product’s value.