Growth experiments
Smallpdf
https://smallpdf.com/
Product Designer
Q3 - Q4 2021
- How might we give our users a sense of efficiency while using Smallpdf?
- How might we help users uncover new ways to integrate Smallpdf into their daily workflow?
Pleasant Loading
Inspired by Clippy from the 90s—to increase use case discovery.
“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).
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”.
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.
Results
Succesful! Connected app used: +2.3%
USP added signup
Using social proof to increase account creationWe 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.
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.
Solution
We had 2 variants:
A= Social proofs quotes added to to the signup page
B= Rotating USPs on the signup page
Results
Experiment failed, 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.
“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).
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.
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.
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!)