Overview

Timeline

UX Design - 4 Weeks
Development - 2 Weeks
QA Testing - 2 Weeks

Type

Wagepoint user experience improvements launched to users in January 2024

My Role

UX Design
‍Research

Tools

Figma
HTML/CSS

Understanding wagepoint as a whole

Wagepoint is a Canadian web application that enables small business owners to run payroll. Its user demographic primarily includes individuals from an older generation who tend to be not as tech savvy.

Goals for the Wagepoint experience: Intuitive, straightforward, quick

The existing guided onboarding experience

Previously, when new small business owners joined Wagepoint they were to complete a guided onboarding experience where they were locked into completing steps sequentially. This was to streamline the process of onboarding, while gathering all the necessary information to get users set up to run payroll.

The  UX problem: blockages and puzzling user-flow

Users were able to navigate out of the guided onboarding steps without a clear path to return to onboarding.

Pages they could navigate to would be dead-ends with no way forward in onboarding.

The onboarding felt like an experience separate from the rest of the app due to it's difference in UI, and structured, linear steps.

The back-end problem: regression and bugs

The code for the guided onboarding experience and completing steps within the native app were built on the backend differently.

When changes needed to happen within one part of the app, if it was also a step in the guided onboarding experience the change would have to be made twice.

The plan

Who is our typical user, and what are their needs?

Who: Small business owners who are not the most tech savvyCompanies with an average of 1- 5 employees.

Goals: A quick onboarding experience and to establish a feeling of comfort within the app from the outset.

Solution: a streamlined, cohesive experience

As the designer on the project, I decided to remove the guided onboarding experience. This will allow users to complete the same steps within the app instead of having a separate onboarding experience.

Next step card

Prompts users to complete next step with explanation as to what it is.

Incorporating progressive disclosure by only showing users the details of their next step helps to prevent overwhelming users and allows them to feel more in control.

Account set up checklist

Users can see their progress in a progress bar, as well as all the checklist steps listed.

Users know what to expect when checklist items are clearly defined and can confidently complete setting up their account.

Gamifying the experience by adding a progress bar gives users an incentive to complete all checklist items.

Account set up navigation card

Users can see their account set up progress from every page in the app until account set up steps have been completed.

Now, users can navigate back to the account set up page or directly to their next step in the account set up process, saving them time and effort.

Dynamic dead-end prompts

Appropriate prompts appear in dead-ends which encourage the user to complete certain account set-up steps. Now, users will have full access to where they were once trying to navigate.

Offering users transparency about system constraints will help users better understand how their company information impacts different areas of the Wagepoint app.

Allowing users to navigate organically through the app gives them a sense of ownership over their experience.

Final thoughts + next steps

Allowing users to navigate through the app on their own terms will help familiarize them with the app sooner, and the experience of onboarding versus using the app is no longer disjointed.

Removing the guided onboarding experience in the backend means that now the code does not live in two separate places, which will lead to less code regression and bugs.

A short project timeline lead to implementing the solution without conducting user testing

In the future, we plan to test the onboarding process with new users and existing users, as well as record data about the following points: 

  • Where users drop off in the experience → Analyze why they may feel frustrated at a certain step
  • How long each step takes users → Redesign to make time spent even shorter
  • Popular sequences of steps users take to complete account set up → Consider adopting popular sequences to account set up flow