Thumbtack: New Pro Onboarding
Thumbtack connects home care professionals (pros) and homeowners (customers).
This project was an effort to overhaul our onboarding flow for pros to make it more attractive for larger businesses and easier to navigate in general.
Business goals
We needed to update our product offering and messaging, to tap into a broader market share.
We wanted to migrate into the top 3 platforms in terms of market share of larger businesses.
Phase I: Improve our positioning on Thumbtack’s ‘front cover.’
Phase II: Update our offering under the hood.
User personas
Part of updating our offering meant defining what we meant internally by a “larger business.” I worked with our product manager and senior leadership to create a set of pro personas. These personas have since been used on multiple projects to help us identify the audience for a particular new product.
We didn’t want to leave our “simply starters” and “cautious curators” behind. But we initially determined that the improvements to onboarding would focus on our “grow getters” and “established expanders.”
The hope was that these improvements would attract more of the grow getters & established expanders. Thumbtack was among the lowest-used by these pros, compared to competitors.
Content goals
Our pro onboarding flow was a maze.
Since we were redesigning the flow anyways, I audited the flow and content and took a hard look at where we could reduce friction and dropoff. I set out to simplify, consolidate, and make the point of each step in the onboarding journey more transparent.
Audit / site map
Navigating the pro app’s current onboarding flow meant completing up to 26 (!!) different steps.
Initial proposal
I proposed 3 different ways to improve the onboarding design & content.
Option 1: “Kill our darlings”
I analyzed the onboarding flow, and found screens that were excessive and removable, or could be rolled up into other stages of the flow.
Option 2: Merge if / when we can’t cut
If removing screens felt too aggressive for product teams, I also pointed out key spots where two or three screens could roll up into one.
As an example, I looked at this piece of onboarding:
I suggested making it clear right from the header that this is the part of onboarding where the pro creates their business profile on Thumbtack. This eliminates the need for explanatory sub copy.
I also suggested removing non-essential fields, like year founded and home (non-business) address, which weren’t compelling or relevant to profile creation.
I then had room to fold a security page (screen 3 above), which checks for partially duplicative information, into the main profile creation step.
Three screens became one, as shown in this wireframe I mocked up to the right.
Option 3: Reveal the maze
A third lower-lift option would be to maintain the flow at the same overall size, but add progress indicators, and make some steps skippable (i.e. either optional, or something the pro can fill out later after they finish onboarding).
From a content optimization perspective, using all 3 options at once was most ideal. But an “and/or” approach offered the team sizing options.
While auditing the flow and suggesting these improvements, I took the opportunity to also lay down a set of content design principles, to use for all onboarding work going forward.
Principle #1: Keep it lean
Time is money, and large businesses are bottom-line focused. Our onboarding should be a breeze to navigate, and never overwhelm the pro. Pros should be steered on a path that gets them into the product as quickly as possible.
Principle #2: Tailor to a narrow audience
We want to build an onboarding journey that maps to a specific pro - the committed, larger business - and focus on aspects of account setup that map to their specific goals (i.e. setting ambitious and flexible budgets, outbidding against other pros for leads, importing reviews from other sites).
Principle #3: State the value
Committed pros want to know from the moment they come in to the pro app: what is unique about Thumbtack? What value do we offer against anyone they perceive as a competitor? How are we different? We want to give them something to look forward to as they onboard, and say what’s exciting about the Thumbtack pro experience throughout our signup process.
Constraints
Our business goal of attracting larger businesses was limited by the fact that we didn’t have the time or the resources to build a complete large pro optimized product.
On the design and content end of things, we had an additional constraint: different pro product teams owned small pieces of the overall onboarding flow. So there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and even small changes meant long review cycles. It was challenging to recommend the simplifications and principles listed above, when these recommendations couldn’t be tied directly in to business goals.
Research
While auditing the product and noting some initial solutions, principles, and constraints, I also participated in a research study. We sat with leaders of a small group of medium-to-large businesses - mostly house cleaning, landscaping, and moving companies local to the Bay Area. We had them work through our baseline onboarding flow, whether they’d signed up previously for Thumbtack or not. We also asked them questions about what they’d like and expect to see on the front cover of our product. This research heavily informed the content.
Value propositions
Combining everything I knew about our large pros to-date, including the research study, I suggested a refresh to our positioning - the narrative we used to talk about what Thumbtack offers pros.