Product Designer passionate about improving digital products solving user real problems, always with an eye on branding.
👉🏽 More about me
💼 Even more! (CV)
Ava Women
Smallpdf experiments
Checkout optimization
Onboarding users
Smallpdf Visuals
Meteo Swiss
iPratico
Ava Women Visuals
Other projects
Miroverse
Medium
Smallpdf experiments | UX/UI Project
Growth experiments
The goal of the growth team (which I was part of) was to let our users be familiar with what Smallpdf has to offer and use it for its maximum potential - here below you can find some of the experiment we did in order to achieve our goal.
MY ROLE
UX Designer
UX Designer
TOOLS
Figma
Figma
WHEN
Q3 - Q4 2021
Q3 - Q4 2021
🎯GOALS
The goals and the key metrics are a bit different depending on the project but overall the ideas sparked from the same HMWs:
- HMW give our users a sense of efficiency while using Smallpdf?
- HMW allow users to find new application of Smallpdf for their daily work?
(On the same HMW you can also check this other project about onboarding users)
The goals and the key metrics are a bit different depending on the project but overall the ideas sparked from the same HMWs:
- HMW give our users a sense of efficiency while using Smallpdf?
- HMW allow users to find new application of Smallpdf for their daily work?
(On the same HMW you can also check this other project about onboarding users)
A BIT OF CONTEXT
Smallpdf is a Swiss company with more than 40 million monthly users - with over 20 PDF tools it helps people to deal with documents worldwide.
Smallpdf is a Swiss company with more than 40 million monthly users - with over 20 PDF tools it helps people to deal with documents worldwide.
Pleasant Loading
-----Inspired by Clippy from the 90s—to increase use case discovery.
Problem
“I actually didn’t realise that there were more possibilities within this program”
Users signup for 1 or 2 features, they don’t really know all the tools that they can use with Smallpdf.
Solution
The loading state, when processing a document, could take some time so why not take advantage of it and show the users some tips and insights? Inspired from the 90s we added a nice clippy illustration with some tips and tricks.
Hypotheses
- If we provide some tips while the users are waiting for the documents to be processed, they’ll be curious and might start using / exploring more tools.
- If we provide some tips while the users are waiting for the documents to be processed, we decrease the perception of “wasting time / wait a lot”.
Results
Succesful! Connected app used: +2.3%
“I actually didn’t realise that there were more possibilities within this program”
Users signup for 1 or 2 features, they don’t really know all the tools that they can use with Smallpdf.
Solution
The loading state, when processing a document, could take some time so why not take advantage of it and show the users some tips and insights? Inspired from the 90s we added a nice clippy illustration with some tips and tricks.
Hypotheses
- If we provide some tips while the users are waiting for the documents to be processed, they’ll be curious and might start using / exploring more tools.
- If we provide some tips while the users are waiting for the documents to be processed, we decrease the perception of “wasting time / wait a lot”.
Results
Succesful! Connected app used: +2.3%
USP added signup aka Fabrication and deception
----- Using social proof to increase account creationProblem
We have a very clean signup page (where users enter their email and password) that we could potentially improve to drive conversion to trial. Instead of focusing on features—we want to test whether adding social proofs to the page can help increase brand trust and attractiveness for potential and existing free users to sign up for a free trial.
Solution
We had 2 variants:
A= Social proofs quotes added to to the signup page
B= Rotating USPs on the signup page
Hypotheses
- If we provide social proofs on the signup page users will feel more comfortable creating their account because showcasing real user experiences and endorsement could help in building trust and credibility.
- If users are aware of Smallpdf value when they are prompt with the account creation they will be more likely to continue and signup.
Results
Experiment tanked, badly. Accounts creation went down 11%; trials started also went down, as account creation was impacted.
Key learning: the signup page should be as clean as possible—as this step should not be distractive. We run a new experiment to iterate and validate this hypothesis.
Iteration
We did a clean iteration on this one where account creation went up by 7.1%
We also noticed that Trial started went down by 9.3% but at the same time Trial to pro went up by 3.1% = This means that the quality of the traffic was higher and it proved that a cleaner experience on the signup page was the right approach.
We have a very clean signup page (where users enter their email and password) that we could potentially improve to drive conversion to trial. Instead of focusing on features—we want to test whether adding social proofs to the page can help increase brand trust and attractiveness for potential and existing free users to sign up for a free trial.
Solution
We had 2 variants:
A= Social proofs quotes added to to the signup page
B= Rotating USPs on the signup page
Hypotheses
- If we provide social proofs on the signup page users will feel more comfortable creating their account because showcasing real user experiences and endorsement could help in building trust and credibility.
- If users are aware of Smallpdf value when they are prompt with the account creation they will be more likely to continue and signup.
Results
Experiment tanked, badly. Accounts creation went down 11%; trials started also went down, as account creation was impacted.
Key learning: the signup page should be as clean as possible—as this step should not be distractive. We run a new experiment to iterate and validate this hypothesis.
Iteration
We did a clean iteration on this one where account creation went up by 7.1%
We also noticed that Trial started went down by 9.3% but at the same time Trial to pro went up by 3.1% = This means that the quality of the traffic was higher and it proved that a cleaner experience on the signup page was the right approach.
Connected compression
-----Drive “connected apps used” aka multiple tools used in one session—to increase the intensity and the feature spread of Smallpdf.
Problem
“I actually didn’t realise that there were more possibilities within this program”
Users signup for 1 or 2 features, they don’t really know all the tools that they can use with Smallpdf (and we also know that the more tools they use in one session the more they are likely to stay with us).
Solution
We could try to engage our users by exposing them to other use cases (and tools that convert well), specifically compression when the output weight more than 1MB.
We had 2 variants: one with a very prominent helper and another one with a “more visually integrated” UI.
Hypotheses
- If we help our users, prompting a suggestion to compress when the file is big, they will discover more possibilities with Smallpdf and they will also find our solution helpful to their daily job.
Results
Succesful! Both variants performed better than the original but the helper variant (Variant A below) was the winner: 42% increase in connected apps used, more accounts were created, higher results seen as well.
(In some user testings - done for other reasons - we even had users mentioning how helpful the helper was!)
“I actually didn’t realise that there were more possibilities within this program”
Users signup for 1 or 2 features, they don’t really know all the tools that they can use with Smallpdf (and we also know that the more tools they use in one session the more they are likely to stay with us).
Solution
We could try to engage our users by exposing them to other use cases (and tools that convert well), specifically compression when the output weight more than 1MB.
We had 2 variants: one with a very prominent helper and another one with a “more visually integrated” UI.
Hypotheses
- If we help our users, prompting a suggestion to compress when the file is big, they will discover more possibilities with Smallpdf and they will also find our solution helpful to their daily job.
Results
Succesful! Both variants performed better than the original but the helper variant (Variant A below) was the winner: 42% increase in connected apps used, more accounts were created, higher results seen as well.
(In some user testings - done for other reasons - we even had users mentioning how helpful the helper was!)
(We did a loooot of small experiments while I was in the growth team, reach out to know more!)