AI-driven digital marketing assistant - A case study
Pilipda "Soda" Samattanawin
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Posted Oct 15, 2021
At a B2B AI-driven digital marketing startup, I took an initiative to create an onboarding process for new sign-ups from research, design and hand-off.
Turning AI power into user value: improving onboarding, validating growth levers, and enhancing campaign experience
Overview
Otis is an AI-powered digital advertiser that helps businesses and agencies manage ads across all major platforms.
Joined as the sole designer on a team of 10 engineers shortly after the seed round. The company was heavily engineering-focused and lacked integrated customer communication within the product. I led workshops with key stakeholders, established design workflows, and improved UX across both web and mobile platforms.
Key outcomes
Bridged the gap between internal AI capabilities and customer understanding, creating a smoother user entry experience
Data-driven landing page optimization: applied validation and testing to improve conversion and clarity
Improved key workflows based on focus metrics, resulting in higher customer satisfaction
Case study on Onboarding
How might we improve the onboarding process to decrease the number of drop-offs after signing up by fostering greater customer confidence and product knowledge?
Problems discovered: unique product but lack engaging onboarding = failure to show users the aha moment.
Through secondary research and interview with the sales and support team, I found that:
There are 2 main types of customers that are interested in using our product (Since our product is B2B, it was difficult to get real user input, so I rely on the sales and support team for data)
1. Companies that are willing to spend $1000+/month for their ads, have used marketing agencies in the past but did not get amazing results, and have no control over their ad account.
2. Solopreneurs or Small business owners that are new to marketing, not heavily invested, and just wanted to try it out.
We are prioritizing persona #2 while designing the onboarding process because persona #1 is handled directly by the sales team using a demo.
I also see a pattern in the onboarding experience for successful products and I want to focus on:
Goals and expectations for signing up - getting users to their aha moment the fastest
Flexibility - be able to skip at any step of the process
This step helped me understand how companies strongly approached helping their users.
Define
How Might We onboard customers with different marketing goals?
Before starting to identify the problem, I built the current user journey map after the interview with the customer support team. After which I see a clear problem that I can define.
I, then, had an interview and shadowed digital marketing experts so that I know the process of creating successful campaigns.
Using that I was able to form How Might We problem statement for the onboarding experience.
Ideate
lighten up the standard onboarding process
I started brainstorming concepts, keeping in mind the different goals that visitors had signed up. Eventhough we only target small and medium business owners, the behavior and their goal for signing up can vary, some may want to bring their brand awareness, some only focus on conversion. Due to this reason, I decided to allow users to personalize their onboarding experience, resulting in unique guidelines depending on their answers.
The 3 questions will cover:
Users’ business industry - we chose 7 main industries that are interested in our product.
Users’ business platform - being online or brick & mortar store, using this we will be able to know their target location and strengthen their personalized experience.
Users’ marketing goal - the most important question that would guide the type of campaigns the user should start creating. (Here, we started out with 3 main goals - generate leads, sell products or services, and build brand awareness)
Core onboarding - part 1
These questions will personalize the onboarding experience for the user. As a plus, our team will understand our users in-depth.
By letting people “customize” their experience, you allow them to invest energy in your product for future rewards.
From Nir Eyal, User investment: make your users do the work (2019)
Design decision: overall onboarding process
Account creation - The standard necessary steps in order for the sales and marketing team to collect data: they are email, password, and name.
Onboarding questions- setting up personalized experience. With the help of a copywriter, we framed 3 questions that users need to answer in order to get personalized guidelines for their unique business.
Generate results
Step-by-step guidelines
Step by step guidelines
expected onboarding sitemap