Dropbox Plus Onboarding

Although Dropbox started out as a simple product, its product offerings have grown in complexity over the years and have become more difficult to understand. Moreover, it was difficult for self-serve individuals who started a trial to understand what value they receive for a paid subscription and how it could solve their specific needs.

Context

Role: Design Lead

Mentored and managed output of another designer
Collaborated closely with Product, Data Analytics, Engineering, Brand and Product Marketing
High-visibility project on Growth

Skills: Design Strategy, Visual Design, Prototyping, Mentorship

Customer Problem: When users start a trial, they struggle to understand why Dropbox is useful and what value they receive for a paid subscription.

Business Problem & Objectives: Increase quarterly revenue by adding trials for Dropbox Plus (on web). Measured by trial-to-paid conversion rate (TPCR) and retention after the first 30 days of subscribing (M1).

The old experience, which hadn't been updated in several years

Hypothesis: Guiding users to take core actions associated with creating product value will make them more likely to retain as paid subscribers. Measured by the rate at which key actions are taken and trial conversion (TPCR).

Design Goals & Considerations

Guide users to take action

Using storage space, the desktop and mobile apps is core to Dropbox’s utility. How might we encourage this?
Clarify the product's value

What are the added benefits to the user? How might they realize value as soon as possible?
Build a flexible experience

We know a one-size-fits-all strategy doesn’t work long-term. How might we build something that will last?

We scoped work based on a holistic customer journey, mapping out key touchpoints with experience components

Explorations of customer entry-points, ranging from subtle to immersive, including the ability to return to the experience at a later time

Integrating the new brand into product experiences required a close partnership with Design Systems, Brand, and Product Marketing

Product Tour

While we wanted to guide users to what they should do first, we knew that understanding why and how to use Dropbox's features across devices was also important for retention. Building a product tour allowed customers to learn Dropbox faster, without visiting the Help Center.

Interaction Design

I designed micro interactions to help with discovery, spatial navigation and celebrating progress, helping introduce new users to the Dropbox brand.

UI Animations

Due to time constraints of the project, we weren't able to partner with our agency to produce animated assets. Instead, I took on storyboarding and producing all 9 "how-to" videos focused on the 3 main jobs-to-be-done: adding files, organizing, and sharing.

Results

Though trial conversion (TPCR) did not move in any significant way, we did increase:

Users uploading files (23%)
Users linking mobile (22%)
Users linking desktop (8%)

15% of users also engaged with the product tour

Learnings

Having a design-led process helped cross-functional partners think more holistically
Building a platform was a way of creating a shared vocabulary between Design, Product, and Engineering
The platform experience itself was later adopted by other teams across the organization, who have used it to onboard their users.

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