Onboarding
Wistia — 2021 to 2022
Project
Wistia's onboarding experience evolved significantly as we worked to better support users from the moment they signed up. Over the course of two years, I led design across multiple projects that laid the foundation for a more cohesive system — one that's goal-driven, brand-personalized, and built to encourage confident first steps.
Results
+180% increase in purchase rate for users that uploaded a logo
4x increase in trial signups
Team
1 product manager, 2 engineers, 1 product designer (me!)
My role
Led the design of a personalized onboarding experience, created an interactive product tour, and developed a system of contextual help tooltips
Goals
- Create a cohesive, scalable onboarding system across signup, trial, and first actions
- Increase trial starts and return rates
- Encourage collaboration early in the user journey
Welcome to Wistia
A redesigned multi-step onboarding flow launched at signup. I updated the visual design and UX for consistency and reduced fall-off. The system introduced goal selection, department tagging, and video experience questions, plus added brand customization features (logo upload, player color).
52%
activation rate for users who customized branding during onboarding
+180%
purchase rate for users that uploaded a logo
Trial Prompts in WTW
A seamless prompt to start a trial, embedded directly into onboarding. I designed the trial step as an optional third screen in the welcome flow, clarified value, and removed friction. We ran this across multiple variants to test the impact of different CTAs and messaging.
4x
increase in trial signups
Invite Users During Onboarding
Prompted new trial users to invite teammates immediately after opting in. I designed a new invite flow to appear post-trial opt-in and integrated existing manager invite components into onboarding. The system defined per-plan invite limits (e.g., Plus = 3, Pro = 5) and included running as an experiment to see how inviting users impacted purchase rate, account activity, and retention.
+25%
invite rate during trials (from 2%)
7x
higher conversion for users who invited teammates
First User Experience
One of the first onboarding projects for the new team, we updated the first-touch UI to prompt immediate action. I redesigned the post-onboarding experience to clearly surface upload, record, and import options, and introduced left nav, contextual guidance, and simplified CTAs. We used this framework as the basis for other empty states across the app.
+100%
increase in record actions (from 5% to 10%)
2.5x
monthly active accounts
