Product Tour Research
Deputy is a staff rostering software that helps manage schedules from any device, record precise timesheets and streamline award wage calculations. This is a Product Tour Research I did to get to know trial users, their journey, needs and in which context they are using Deputy free trial.
Business challenge
It was not clear to users what they should focus their energy on when they land on the Deputy web app for the first time. They were not provided with a relevant and helpful experience.
My role
I was a part of a Growth team and responsible for identifying system problems and uncovering new opportunities. I completed the user research and played it back to the team and key stakeholders, highlighting key findings and recommendations. I worked very closely with my team (PM and engineers) who assisted with user interviews and testing.
Research key findings
- Users need a clearer starting point, so they can immediately explore what Deputy has to offer
- Users would discover product value if we presented relevant features earlier in their journey
- Users prefer to start from integration to reduce manual entry and to ensure accuracy
- Users will have a more valuable experience if they can roster their own employees
Recommendations
What did the process look like?
Without many pre-existing insights, the project kicked off from various stakeholder, customer support and growth team’s discussions to get a better understanding of the current customer approach and company-wide experiences.
- Business goals
- Stakeholder discussions
- Customer support team discussions
- Competitor analysis
- Data analytics review
- User interviews
- Usability testing
- Experience map
- User flows
- Feedback synthesis
- Data analysis
- Key findings
- Recommendations
- Play back
- Jobs to be done
- Team planning
Business objectives
- Increase conversion rate from trial to paying customers
- Understand user goals and expectations on Deputy’s free trial
- Create a tailored experience for each customer within their relevant industry
Data analysis
Internal feedback
By reaching out to customer support and onboarding teams I was looking to understand the following :
- Who and why created a free trial?
- Did users have any expectations once the trial was created?
- What questions or requests did users have during onboarding walk-through?
The team was incredibly helpful in sharing their insights, they also invited me to partake in live demo sessions which they carry out with trial users. These sessions helped me to uncover a few common patterns.
Competitive analysis
The purpose of this analysis was to determine what our competitors and other SaaS companies do to assist new trials.
User feedback
A round of usability testing and interviews were conducted with Deputy and non-Deputy customers to help us understand their journey, actions and behaviour as well as validating our hypothesis.
Hypothesis:
- After signing up, users are redirected to the Schedule tab as it is the best way to show the value the application can bring to their business
- ‘Unlock more free days’ gamification - it is not 100% clear how it works and what’s offered
- Users find the walkthrough and pop-ups very helpful
- Setting up business locations require more guidance
- Users prefer Help Portal rather than Intercom chat when searching for answers
- Integration should be a part of the onboarding process to assist with set up
User journey
I mapped out a step-by-step screen flow to illustrate what it takes to create a free Deputy trial on a web app.
Research key findings
After synthesising everyone’s feedback, data insights and mapping out user flows, I was able to identify the main pain points and common user patterns. To share the findings, I organised a session with the Growth team and a couple of stakeholders to go through research details and questions. During the session, we grouped the main pain points into 3 categories and brainstormed various possible solutions. Having different experts in the room (engineers, product, design and business) helped us to uncover several opportunities and small wins within them.
Check out 'Onboarding Experiments' project I designed to improve trial user journey.