Crypto Tax Calculator
Onboarding
Role:
Lead Designer
When:
Q4 2023
What:
Onboarding re-design
Outcome
Lift in paid plan conversion rate from 16% to 24%
01 - Problem
Through research and analytics we uncovered two critical problems blocking new user adoption.
A significant portion of new customers held false assumptions, for example, believing that tax was only due when converting to fiat, or that their trades were 'invisible' to tax authorities.
High drop-off rate for new users. We saw they would sign up, land on the main platform, click around on all the pages, and then leave. They weren't being shown the value.
02 - Business impact
This knowledge gap created a direct barrier to adoption. Users who misunderstood the complexity or necessity of crypto taxes failed to see the value in our product, leading to low conversion rates and high drop-offs.
"Why pay for software to calculate my crypto taxes if I can just do it easily myself"
03 - Our hypothesis
We believed that by educating new users AND then immedietly show them value, then they would grasp the core value of the product and convert at a higher rate.
04 - Project approach
A phased and iterative process
Establishing a baseline
End to end usability testing on the existing experience to establish a benchmark and discover the 'why' behind key drop of points
Iterative design and testing
Over 3 rounds of interviews we redesigned the onboarding flow, progressively increasing fidelity. Measuring user reactions and learning what wording and formats were most effective at building understanding.
Live mult-variant testing
User interviews can only take you so far. To really evaluate the effectiveness of this redesign we conducted live multi-variant testing to measure actual behaviour and gather quantitative data
05 - UX Principles
Visibility of system state
Insight: Users consistently underestimated the steps needed for an accurate tax report. This "black box" process meant they had unrealistic expectations, leading to frustration and drop-offs
Progressive disclosure
There's a wide range of crypto activity. A user who only buys crypto has different needs and understanding than someone who trades NFTs or uses DeFi.
To avoid overwhelming users, we built conditional logic into the onboarding. This created a personalised path that progressively disclosed only the right education based on that user's specific activity, ensuring the information was always relevant and never a blocker.
Education
We distilled the highest impact knowledge gaps into key screens that educated users crypto taxes while introducing key terms they'll encounter through the product.
The "Aha" moment
Insight: Letting users into the platform without connecting at least 1 exchange or wallet caused high cognitive load and no clear path to the "Aha" moment.
We hypothesised that the first "Aha!" moment was seeing their own data in the app. So we gated the platform
06 - The result
A 50% lift in conversion
To measure the impact of our new flow and our education hypothesis, we ran a live A/B test with three variants. The results were clear.
Control: The original flow with no changes.
New Onboarding (No Education): Our new, gated flow without the educational screens.
New Onboarding (With Education): The final, complete flow with both the new structure and the educational screens.
