Improving Vyond’s self-serve free-trial funnel
I redesigned key stages of Vyond’s 14-day free-trial funnel—including sign-up, onboarding, AI discovery, and plan trials—to support self-serve conversion.
Free-trial users were dropping off across the conversion funnel.
Historically focused on enterprise B2B sales, Vyond saw an opportunity to convert an increasing proportion of organic users into self-serve subscriptions through its 14-day free trial.
Our free trial users faced friction across the entire funnel—from high drop-offs during email verification, to a steep learning curve causing low video completion rates, to a lack of awareness of our premium AI features.
Four targeted designs addressed friction across the conversion funnel.
Code verification reduced sign-up friction
Data observation: We saw a 30% drop-off from email verification link to account activation, compared to other sign-up methods, such as SSO.
User problems: The original flow used email-link verification. Users experienced delayed emails, confusion when switching domains, and friction from moving between tabs or devices to complete verification.
The solution: I leveraged the code verification method to allow automatic page redirection in domains, keep journey in one tab, and pushed for backend refactoring to send verification codes immediately.
Impact: This design increased sign-up conversion by 15% and reduced time to activation by 67%.
Guided tutorials improved first-video completion
Data observation: We noticed only 50% of the new users complete their first video, which is a metric directly linked to retention and future subscriptions.
User problems: Most users are novice users with no video making skills. They were often overwhelmed by a blank canvas, and were forced to sit through a whole product tour, which wasn't helpful. Some valuable features like character expressions were hard to discover in their first experience.
The solution: I designed a guided tutorial with a pre-made video template and a side panel showing learning steps and progress, helping new users practise key features while creating their first video in Vyond.
Impact: This design resulted in a 20% increase in first video creation completion rate and showed an improved learnability in our post-release user testing.
Contextual nudges doubled AI adoption
Data observation: We observed a low adoption rate among new users when the AI text to video feature was introduced. Users who adopt the AI feature showed a higher conversion rate.
User problems: Most new users stopped discovering when they finished the first video, assuming that's all the product offers.
The solution: I designed a contextual nudge that appears after a new user saves their first video, prompting them to try the AI video feature for even faster results.
Impact: This design resulted in a 2x adoption rate among new users.
A seven-day paid trial supported conversion
Data observation: We saw a drastic difference in conversion rate (15% vs. 1%) in different industry sectors and countries, due to the company's global pricing strategy.
User problems: The existing free trial offering prevented users from fully evaluating the product value, especially with high value AI features gated by a paid subscription.
The solution: I designed a workflow for an extended plan trial offering, enabling existing free trial users to get a paid plan for 7 days with $10, one-tenth of the monthly price.
The experiment: The solution was experimented in Canada and Australia, seeing a 5% participation rate and 40% of the participants converted to a full plan. It was then rolled out to 100+ countries.
Impact: The official launch increased subscriber acquisition by 15% and added $30-35K in MRR.
The funnel improvements increased conversion, activation, AI adoption, and MRR.
Key business metrics improved in this initiative include:
- 15% increase in sign-up conversion and a 67% reduction in time to activation.
- 20% increase in first video creation completion and improved learnability.
- 2x adoption rate in AI features during onboarding phase.
- 15% increase in subscriber acquisition and $30-35K in MRR from the extended plan trial offering.
Leading cross-functional design from funnel data to handoff.
As lead designer in a newly formed Growth team, I took the work from funnel analysis through final interaction decisions and handoff while collaborating with the data analyst, copywriter, and UI designer involved.
Collaboration across data, copy, and UI
I worked with a data analyst and copywriter throughout the funnel initiatives, and partnered with a UI designer to integrate new components into the design system.
Funnel analysis grounded decisions
I ran my own Amplitude analysis to query funnels and identify exact drop-off points, including the 30% drop during email verification. These findings formed the basis of our design hypotheses.
I owned the final interaction decisions
I explored multiple directions before choosing the final behaviours, user flows, and visual treatment of the UI components. Senior leaders reviewed the work and provided feedback on the proposed designs.
Handoff and component guidance
I delivered all design handoffs and shared usage guidance for the new components with the wider design team.
Overall, the initiative was found to be successful in moving business metrics and showed that scalability via product-led growth is possible for a B2B focused product.
Interested in working together? Reach out at y3vu060312@gmail.com or connect on LinkedIn.