Improving Engagement & Comprehension at Arcadia

Background

Overview

This year, as part of the onboarding squad, I helped lead a cross-functional, strategic project to increase user engagement and customer enrollment in the sign up flow for potential residential customers. Since this initiative laddered up to a major company OKR to improve customer enrollment rate by 20%, we hoped to start building strategic alignment across different teams around an ideal flow. After many workshops and internal discussions, we decided to approach this project in an iterative manner where we hoped to release updates in phases, learn from them, and then iterate.

This case study follows phase 1: Increase user engagement and customer enrollment by improving the verbal and visual messaging in the sign up flow.

Problem

Primary problem: The sign up flow converted only about 15% of visitors. Because of this, our UX Researcher conducted empathy interviews last year to uncover why that may be. We learned that the main areas of concern were:

1. Too much novelty - Most people have no mental model analog for community solar

2. Unclear applicability- There’s confusion about which types of homes are eligible and, even among those who are eligible, a lack of certainty about availability.

3. Lack of trust - The novelty discussed above creates a natural trust barrier, as we’re asking people to do something totally different with a brand new company, and the burden of trust falls on us.

4. Unclear benefit - The benefits to community solar are not clear throughout the onboarding journey.

5. Unclear process - The lack of familiarity with managing things via a third party means these steps are ones that most people haven’t completed for any product, especially electricity.

Secondary problem: From full rebranding updates to small changes in the copy for specific screens, we started to notice inconsistency across funnels and across the site. We wanted to ensure our messaging is consistent across different channels as the business grows and customer segments develop.

Our Users

Potential Residential Arcadia customer that has little knowledge around community solar.

• These users:

  • want to better understand how Community solar works and how it aligns with their goals of getting a discount on electricity and helping the environment

  • want to feel comfortable sharing their private information with Arcadia, understand how this information would be used and how that benefits them

Discovery

Adriana and I wanted to understand how the existing onboarding experience, specific screens, and language that contributed to users lack of comprehension and lack of conversion. During this discovery phase, we had a few goals:

1. Get a more discrete understanding of the problem(s) caused by messaging in the funnel

2. Identify easy opportunities for improvements through consensus across various stakeholders

3. Identify larger themes or projects to investigate in future phases of improvements

Mapping our current sign up flows

First, Adriana and I set out to audit our current sign up flows. If we hoped to create strategic alignment around future initiatives and improvements, we needed to be able to visualize the specific nuances and inconsistencies of each funnel.

From there, we narrowed down the scope to a residential user who is paying for community solar through Arcadia. Here is what their experience looked like (prior to updates)

Stakeholder Workshops

Next, I helped Adriana facilitate workshops with internal stakeholders from marketing, sales, customer support, analytics, product, copywriting, design, and engineering. In these workshops, we shared the conversion rates across various touchpoints in the funnel, showed visuals for each screen (thanks to our community solar map), and asked each team member to share painpoints and opportunities for each screen.

Outcomes & Analysis

After, my squad met to understand the technical constraints of the opportunities that came out of the workshop. We decided to divide these opportunities into multiple phases because

1. we wanted to design and develop in an iterative manner learning from quant and qual data

2. we weren’t sure what ideas would resonate with our users

3. we wanted to reduce engineering effort up front until we had more data to work with

We developed an Impact Effort Matrix and focused on low effort high impact ideas. This is why our first phase included improvements to verbal and visual messaging to reduce confusion and increase conversion. These plans were slotted for a 3 months development cycle.

Opportunities of Focus

The opportunities of focus included:

• highlighting benefits to encourage sign up

• educating our users in contextual moments to mitigate drop off

• building trust through transparency and clarity

Design

Content and Information Hierarchy

It was time for me to start designing! My first step was to audit the specific screens within the sign up flow and improve the information hierarchy. It was most important be upfront with the user about their eligibility. Our research showed users were more likely to drop off if they were unable to comprehend their eligibility upfront . Next, I wanted to remind the user of the benefits Arcadia provides. Our research showed that users were most encouraged by savings, climate positivity, and ease of use. And finally, I wanted to add contextual educational moments to remind users why they entered the funnel to join community solar in the first place!

Collaboration with Marketing Team

UX + Copy Writing

I collaborated closely with the Copy Writing team to achieve the final designs. Below are designs before and after copy collaboration. After we collaborated on the content that was most influential for the screen, I made updates from a ux perspective. For example, I decided to add a lot of supplemental information behind a modal, keeping the CTA clear and benefits highlighted.

UX + Graphic Design

Before this update, a lot of the imagery were solar farms (as seen in “Before” below). From our research, many users found this imagery fraudulent and irrelevant. Alongside the graphic design team, we updated the imagery to focus on product shots on contextual screens. We made sure to highlight the benefits and what a user might see if they joined our program.

Final Designs

Metrics for Success

UserTesting.com

I uploaded a script to usertesting.com to see how if users better understood community solar and its benefits.

User Sentiment

Quantitative Research

Collaborating with the data team we discussed adding the follow elements to track improvements:

• A/B test between existing funnel and phase 1 improvements

• Tracking drop off on each screen

• Click events on learn more modals

Next Steps

Phase 2 Explorations

Here is a hackathon idea my squad came up with as a possible phase 2 iteration. We attempted a one page funnel! We plan to test this with users and understand its implications better before making phase two updates to the sign up flow! Check back soon!